Before transplanting plant sprouts to your garden you will need to harden them if they were in your house or a very sheltered area to start with.

You can do this a number of ways.

• Set them outside for a few hours increasing every day until they can stay outdoors all day and over night.
• Set up a fan in your house.
• Touch your plants and cause some stress for them.

Hardening plants by placing them outside a few hours per day.

When you first start placing your plants outside to harden them make sure that it is a calm day, with temperatures between 50-60 degrees. Any less or more than this will cause the plant more stress and time outside will need to start at a shorter interval and increase more gradually.

Make sure that the first days are spent in an area without direct sunlight. Again, if you have to set your new sprouts in direct sunlight start with a shorter time and increase more gradually.

If you encounter temperatures that suddenly plummet , and are too cold to continue your schedule place a small fan on your plants for the amount of time they would have been outside.

Here is an example of a hardening schedule:

• Day 1 – Water plants, and wait about 1-2 hours for them to soak it up. Well watered plants handle stress better. Place plants outside for 1 hour.
• Day 2 – Repeat the watering and place outside for 2 hours.
• Day 3 – ” ” place outside for 4 hours.
• Day 4 – ” ” place outside for 5-6 hours depending on how they handled the increase yesterday.
• Day 5 – ” ” place outside for 6 hours.
• Day 6 – ” ” place outside for 6-8 hours.
• Day 7 – ” ” place outside for 8 hours.
• Day 8 – ” ” place outside for 8 hours.
• Day 9-14 – Place outside in partial direct sunlight during some of their time, increasing to all the daytime hours. Start watching the night time lows and if they are in the 50’s plan to leave the plants outside some daytime and some nighttime hours. Now we start thinking of this more as giving the plants an indoor break, but they are living outside most of the time now. If you have inclement weather make sure to bring them in.
• Day 14 – Plants can be transplanted at this time or even sooner if they are doing well and liking it outside. I have had plants harden and be happy within one week, and I have had plants which need longer to harden.
• If you notice that your plants are not super happy after they have been transplanted do not worry. You can give them a break under a canopy of a bed sheet if they need a break or if you have an exceptionally windy day.

Setting Up A Fan

• Set up a small preferably oscillating fan near your plants. Turn it on the lowest setting and allow it to blow the plants 1 hour.
• Increase by 1-2 hours per day depending on how they look. Up until they can handle it almost around the clock. You can also turn it up to medium for 1 hour once they can handle the lowest setting to further harden them.
• Refer to the tips and steps at the end of the previous section pertaining to finally transplanting them outdoors. They should be given an opportunity to be outside at least for most of the day and night and have a few breaks indoors before fully transplanting because they also need to be able to handle direct sunlight and temperature changes.

Touching the plants

• Several times through out the day fun your cleaned hands gently over your plants and get them used to some stress. If you do this from the time they are sprouts they will harden faster using the above methods when the time comes.

The younger you can get them out in the wind and sun the hardier they will be.

Also, if your tomatoes start looking very unhealthy remember that you can bury a tomato plant because tomatoes can grow roots from anywhere on the stem. So if they drop some bottom leaves, or are getting tall and unruly just bury that part when you transplant to give them a shorter start making them root deeper and less vulnerable to wind when they are first transplanted.

Happy Gardening!

I just wanted to mention a few things about starting your seeds outdoors in the garden this early.

As I have mentioned before, if you have hoop houses you can start your seeds outside this early. Especially with this nice weather we are having!

There is something to keep in mind though – Most seeds need temperatures in the 60’s to 80’s to germinate. If you have plastic over your hoop houses and it is reasonably air-tight you can expect to reach that if the outside temperature is in the 50’s and the sun is shining on your houses. In fact, it might get much hotter than that in there!

If your outside temps are not quite that high yet, I would suggest germinating indoors and then transplanting as soon as the plants get their second leaves. (You could transplant them as soon as they are up, but if you wait a little bit you might have a better survival rate.)

Once the seedlings have germinated and are green above ground you need to really watch that temperature and make sure it doesn’t get too hot and fry your newly germinated seeds!

So – Keep your hoop house warm/hot until the seeds germinate and then just keep it above freezing. Most plants do well in the 45-55 degree range.

I suggest getting a thermometer and watching that temp. You can record and compare the inside temp with the outside temp, and if it is sunny or not and you will have a good idea what temp it is without having to actually check. I keep the front and back of my houses down with bricks so I can remove them and roll the plastic back to vent on hot days. I have the sides stapled down so they are somewhat air-tight.

I recently bought a remote thermometer which I have not set up yet, but I am excited to use it. It has a temperature/weather station you keep inside, it also monitors the low and high and records it for 7 days! It also has a probe which I intend to place outside, then I will get an outside and an inside reading and I can see what’s going on in there without ever having to go outside!

Thanks for stopping by!

I have several tomato plants that I need to get rid of. I dug them out of my vegetable garden last night to create some space between my existing tomato plants. There is one pear tomato plant, the rest are standard tomato plants. They are ALL producing tomatoes (green still).

They have been raised organic, never sprayed with anything. They are from NON-GMO organic seed stock http://www.stclareseeds.com/ a great company which has signed the safe seed pledge. So you could even save these seeds and get awesome tomatoes year after year! 🙂

Let me know where you planted them, and if you liked the tomatoes they produced! Join the forum and talk gardening with us all year round.

Thanks for stopping by

-Sara

I started some petunias from seed this year and I learned a lot about them!

They are picky little things! They need the soil to be very very warm to germinate. So a seed tray warming pad is essential. I thought that most of mine were duds until they sat outside in a 90 degree day and ALL germinated!

They like to be wet all the time and never really dry out between waterings.

I also learned that it takes 6 months for the seedlings to become the small plants you see in the garden centers. Amazing. So they are very slow growing. In order to have petunias for next summer I would need to start seeds indoors around October or November at the latest!!! (Which I intend to do by they way!!!)

Thanks for stopping by ~ Sara

So I was able to harden the seedlings successfully! Normally that’s when I kill things. Generally I forget about them and then they die from over exposure. This time I was meticulous about how much time they were out each day and brought them in properly. The only thing that happened was a little sunburn from starting in a place that was too sunny.

Note to self: Start hardening in a place that only gets a few hours of sunlight per day. The plants get plenty of indirect sunlight even if they are never in direct sunlight.

I have started transplanting them into the vegetable garden today!

I have transplanted the broccoli, and the tomato plants (roma and beefstake). I probably have about 20 volunteer tomato plants out there as well!!! I will wait until they are a bit larger and then thin them out and see what plants came back from the dead tomatoes that were on the ground.

So tomorrow and Saturday I plan to transplant the carrots, peppers, onions and petunias.

Thanks for stopping! ~ Sara

So, I have discovered a few things about potting soil, and seed starting soil etc… that I want to share with you!

Seed starting soil:

• Already has fertilizer in it! Unless your soil is over 6+ months old do NOT use a fertilizer when you water!
• Seed starting mix has a lot of Peat Moss in it, which can throw off the Ph of your soil a bit if you don’t transplant right away. I have found in particular that it is deficient in Calcium. I remedied mine by adding a 50/50 solution of milk and water to one watering. I will also add some egg shells to the top of the soil next time I have some. This can also save tomatoes from blossom-end rot.

Potting Soil

• Not only does potting soil generally come with fertilizer already in it, you can get different kinds of fertilizer, and different kinds of mixes. Read the package well so that you understand exactly what you are getting!
• Testing the Ph of your soil in this case is also important. Simply by being on the shelf in that plastic package for too long can throw off the Ph.

Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and not end up burning your plants or having them wilt due to being calcium deficient!

Thanks for stopping by!