Hello all! This is my first post here.

I have an heirloom container garden up and running (finally!), but I ran into an issue last night while I was transplanting one of my tomato plants.

I had it in a temporary container, which I had filled with some soil from the yard. The temporary container wound up housing the plant for longer than I anticipated. When I was finally ready to transplant it into it's larger pot with high quality potting soil/growth medium, the "soil" I had in the temporary pot had turned to total sludge. Thick, goopy, slimy, nasty. No wonder the plant wasn't looking too well.

Unsure what else to do, and completely unable to shake off the goop, I sunk my hands under the root ball and pulled up (causing it to lose some of its roots). I then gently ran some water over the intact roots until about 95% of the sludge was gone. I then planted the bare roots into it's permanent container, watered it like crazy, and prayed for a miracle.

My question is this: In your experience, will the combination of root trauma and having all the soil washed off the roots kill it? Or do you think it can spring back?

It's currently in a hydroponic pot that is 25" across, 30" tall. Soil is high quality organic potting mix, Kellog is the name brand I believe. I mixed that 2:1 with fertile garden soil (not the same stuff that turned to sludge) and then covered the top of the soil with 1" of black mulch for moisture/temperature regulation. We are working on getting a drip system up and running, but until then I am hand watering, about 1 gallon in the morning, 1/2 gallon at night (daytime temps are over 100 degrees here right now). Container is in full sun.

Any thoughts, input, advise?

Thanks in advance