Hardening off – And life is busy

Posted on May 29, 2021May 29, 2021 by Allene Hester

Yes, it has been a while since I have blogged. Life is busy right now, and I’m also making this a part of my normal routine, so forgive me if I am not consistent at the beginning. I am human too and new things take time to become habit. Regardless, here I am now.

To give you an idea of what I have been up to from a personal perspective, we have been fully vaccinated! For those of you reading this years from now, this is a throwback to COVID-19 vaccinations. Since we have been fully vaccinated, we decided to risk sending E back to school. There was enough evidence to support her going back safely, and honestly, she needed to hang out with people her own age. This has been hard on so many people, but I feel for all the children who have had to deal with this.

A week back to school, and she caught something. Which, of course, ended with us taking a trip to the hospital. She ended up getting a COVID test, strep throat test, and worried parents and doctors to death. Thankfully, we were told she had strep. I am incredibly grateful for that because we as a society have been able to manage strep throat for many years. Through all this though, she kept her spirits high and is still happy to be back with her friends.

Onto the garden

From a gardening perspective, my garden is fully planted. I think I was a little late with my brassicas, but if they don’t work out, I’ll plant them again in the fall. There is a lot to talk about in relation to the garden, but for this post specifically, I want to talk about the process to harden off and give some disappointing news. First and foremost, do not skip hardening off. This is absolutely critical to healthy plants.

What is hardening off?

So, what is hardening off? To put it simply, it is a process of getting your seedlings tougher so they can handle the elements. When starting seedlings indoors, they may look great, but they can’t hold up to wind, rain, or other elements because they are sheltered. Imagine living your entire life indoors, then suddenly are suddenly stuck outside in 50 MPH wind. You are not going to be comfortable. Well, that shock can easily kill a tender young plant. Instead of shocking them out of existence, the goal is to slowly get them used to the elements.

This is a relatively simple process. All you have to do is bring them outside for a little while then bring them back inside. When I first started gardening, I heard you just leave them outside for 30 minutes a day for a week, then you plant. As I became more seasoned, I realized that just wasn’t enough. I did some research and experimenting and discovered a phased approach is the best. Some people can complete this in a week, but don’t feel bad if it takes longer because a freak storm, sickness, random road trip, or something else slows down the process. It is better to have this process take a month instead of killing all your seedlings.

And now, a simplified version for hardening off:

Step 1:

Pick a mild day and bring your plants outside for 30 minutes to an hour. How long depends on your current temperatures and what you are hardening off. For example, if the temperature is 50°F (10°C) and you are hardening off a summer crop like tomatoes, you want to lean more towards the 30-minute mark. For that matter, if you are still having consistent 50°F days, I recommend waiting to start this process for tomatoes until it warms up a bit.

Step 2:

Bring them out the next day and increase their outside time by 30 minutes to an hour. This just gives them a little more time outside to harden their stems and leaves and get used to things outside.

Step 3:

Repeat step 2 every day. Take care to expose them to different times of the day. Meaning some days bring them out at dawn, some days bring them out in the middle of the day, some days bring them out in the evenings. Each time of day exposes them to something different, and like the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger. Which really is the whole point of hardening off.

Step 4:

If they have been exposed from dawn to dusk without showing signs of over-stress (losing a lot of leaves, wilting, etc.) you can leave them out for their first night under the stars. Check on them first thing in the morning to make sure they are ok. Barring unforeseen circumstances they should be totally fine to leave outside until you are ready to plant them in the ground.

Things to consider

The above steps are in an ideal world, but things happen. Pay attention to the weather. If you are supposed to get a freak hail storm, skip the day and resume it the next day. If your plants show signs of stress, back off and let them recover before starting again. As I mentioned before, there is no harm in taking longer to make sure your plants are doing well.

Make sure you set a timer so you don’t forget them. There is nothing worse than getting ready to plant the seedlings you spent so much energy growing, only to forget they are outside on day 1 or 2 and leaving them all day. I’ve done that, and most of the time they don’t survive. Timers are critical.

If you are like most people and are not lucky enough to be at home with them all day, you can do your hardening whenever you have time. If you work, you might not be able to bring them in an hour after you put them outside, or put them out at noon if you aren’t there. It is perfectly acceptable to put them out after you get off work, or before you leave. Just remember to bring them back in. I have a day job, so pre-COVID I would set them outside in the morning, bring them in, then set them out again when I came home. So they are getting that exposure twice a day instead of all at once. You can save your long exposure times for your days off.

Seedling bag review

Now comes the disappointing news. In a previous post, I mentioned I bought some biodegradable bags in hopes that it would make transplanting less stressful. They did really well on my sprout rack. The bags had roots growing through them, the plants had green leaves, and were growing steadily. I was pretty happy with them. Until I started hardening them off.

Before and after hardening off. This appears to be making a recovery, but it is still disappointing.

As you can see above, the photo on the left was how my seedlings looked before hardening off, the photo on the right is how it looked after. Hardening off with these bags really took a toll. I lost several plants during the hardening-off process and a few after I planted them. It happens, some seedlings just won’t make it. But I have only ever lost that many when I did something wrong. I did exactly what I have done in previous years, but I think the bags did a major disservice. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt here though. They had some great reviews, I think it is likely my climate. We are the second driest state in the US, and I think what happened is the roots didn’t do well with the exposure.

I tried to help them recover. As soon as I noticed a problem, I backed off the hardening off process and kept them inside. After about a week of trying to get them healthy again, I realized that I just needed to get them in the ground as soon as possible. I began the hardening off process again, but this time did a quick version. They had already stayed outside for about 4 hours by the time I pulled them back in, so I started the hardening off process at 2 hours a day and increased the time by about 1.5 hours every day. Looking back, I probably could have shortened that process and gotten them in the ground much quicker, but I was panicked that all that work was going to be for nothing.

Now my cauliflower and a few other things have been in the ground for about 3 weeks, and my tomatoes and peppers have been in the ground for about a week. Having learned that the bags struggled, I took extra effort to make sure the tomatoes and peppers would remain healthy, or at least healthier, during the hardening off process, but I got the same results. Since I knew keeping them inside and trying to help them recover wasn’t going to work, I kept going with the process and got them in the ground last week. Several of them are doing well and hopefully, my next update about them will be more positive.

But for now, here are some pictures of my planted garden.

How I Plan My Garden

Posted on April 10, 2021April 10, 2021 by Allene Hester

In my last post, I briefly mentioned that I was planning my garden. I thought I would provide a little more detail about how I’m approaching it this year. In previous years, I just planted at random. It worked fine because we were gardening in a smaller space. Last year we had so much more garden space that I just used graph paper and plotted out the garden. That worked perfectly fine. It was easy to use and a good visual. I did think I would run into some problems if I continued with that method. First, I would have to completely redo the map every year, including making the list of seeds again. Redoing the list is not a huge problem, but I am always looking for ways to streamline things. Second, I know myself and I know that no matter what I did I would struggle with keeping it in good condition, or remembering where I put it.

This year, I’m doing something a little different. I’ve created a spreadsheet. I plotted out my garden and will be adding the location of all the plants. I’ve also started putting together some basic information about the seeds I have. What you see is not the final version. This is the lazy person’s version who didn’t want to look up all the information before writing this post. I hope to make the full version available to you soon, but for now, here is a snippet of both my plot and my available seeds

What I did last year is use the number from the reference column in the square foot area in my plot. I did that so I knew how much I needed to plant, but also because there was no way I could write small enough to fit the plant name in the squares of the graph paper. And let’s be honest here, even if I could write that small, who could seriously read it? The beauty of a spreadsheet is you can expand and contract the cells, or leave them as they are and just type as much as you want in each cell. I might do that for simplicity’s sake, but maybe not. I haven’t decided yet.

Now that I have the spreadsheet, let’s talk about spacing. In order to know how much you want to plant, you have to first know how much room different plants need to thrive. I’m here to say, there really is not a one size fits all approach to this. A lot of spacing requirements depends on how much time you can devote to your garden, your particular climate, soil conditions, etc. I personally use a combination of square foot gardening and the directions on the seed packet. For example, according to square foot gardening principles, you can plant 1 tomato per square foot. Generally, the seed packets I have seen will say anywhere between 18 – 36 inches. That’s a pretty big difference when you are trying to figure out how much food you can grow. I don’t always agree with the seed spacing on the packet, but it is a good idea to understand the suggested spacing so you can make an informed choice.

Let me give you an example. Determinate tomatoes have a maximum height they will grow. I don’t have to deal with suckers or the plant over-growing its support, or other things like that. So, for determinate tomatoes, I am totally fine with 1 foot of spacing between them. Of course, that is assuming I am able to give them the right amount of nutrients per plant. On the other hand, indeterminate tomatoes keep growing and producing fruit throughout the whole season. They also grow suckers, which are basically another plant that can also produce fruit. Usually, it’s a good idea to prune those off or the tomato will take over. I tend to be great about pruning at the beginning of the year, but get overwhelmed as the season goes on. I know this about myself, so I know that I need to plant my indeterminates a little further apart so they can have enough airflow.

Not to say that you can’t follow the square foot garden rules, you can, just be mindful of the nutrients you are adding back into the soil and the airflow. Especially if you are in a more humid environment. Some people use compost, which is great, some people use fertilizer, which is also great. As long as the plant is doing well and producing food, it is OK to experiment. Also, keep in mind that everyone has different conditions. Some people’s soil isn’t as nutrient-rich as others, so what works for me may not work for you. That is the trial and error part of gardening. It can be frustrating to lose some of your plants but trust me, that happens every single year.

I know that sounds frustrating and if you are anything like me, not having the exact breakdown is hard when you are first getting started. Remember that seeds want to grow and the beauty of gardening is to figure out what works the best for your garden space. Be patient with yourself, you will kill things, some things will be stunted, some things won’t produce food. This happens even in the perfect environment. Just be kind to yourself and learn to appreciate the process.

Spring Planting for my Summer Garden

Posted on April 4, 2021April 4, 2021 by Allene Hester

I don’t know about you, but my favorite time of the year is spring. After a long winter, the birds start chirping, the plants start budding, all the smells of the spring flowers fill your senses. It just makes me happy.

With spring comes garden planning. Last year we expanded our garden. Yes, I’ll admit it was a gut reaction to COVID-19, so it was rushed together and didn’t produce much, but this year I have had time to plan, and the seed companies aren’t working double-time to get seeds out. Last year I didn’t get my seeds until the end of April, so it really stunted the growing season.

Our garden expansion ended up being 14 plots, each plot is 5×5 feet. That is more garden than we have ever had and I’m looking forward to watching it fill out. I spent a lot of time looking for food we like that will do well in our environment. Since we are in Utah, my focus was on varieties that do well in the dry heat. I think I did well for the most part, but we will find that out together.

On my sprout rack, I have some healthy-looking tomatoes, peppers, and cauliflower. All things I have grown before, but this year I’m trying a couple of new things. I started Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherries and some Gobbo Di Nizza Cardoon. Both of them I got from Baker Creek. The cardoon is supposed to be a member of the artichoke family. I love artichokes, so I’m hoping my expectations aren’t too high. The ground cherries are a sweet snack in a husk like a tomatillo. When they are ripe, they fall to the ground and you just peel off the husk and eat them. I’m looking forward to trying them both. I’ll let you know my thoughts at harvest time.

I also have several things I’m going to direct sew in the next couple of weeks, so I will update the blog as they happen.

I bought some of these cloth seedling bags on Amazon. In theory, they are supposed to be bio-degradable and won’t impact the root growth. I’m testing them out to see if they are all that they claim to be. So far I like the concept, but they are a little awkward to work with. Filling them up with dirt while holding it open and holding the seedlings in place took some work, but as you can see, I got it done. I can still bottom water them, and so far they don’t appear to dry out much faster. I’ll keep you posted on the biodegradability factor.

As you can see, some of these are ready to go into the ground. We are amending the soil with some compost over the next couple of weeks to help give them the nutrients they need. As soon as we can, I want to get these plants outside. Yes, you can grow things indoors for a while, but as they get bigger and you put them in bigger pots, they obviously take up more room. I am right now taking up my whole sprout rack and several feet on the floor.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll show you more of the spring prep for my summer garden.

The Sprout Rack

Category: Indoor Garden