Today I began introducing some seedlings to the outdoors. The forecast looks very spring-like for the week ahead. The temperature mid-morning was fifty-five degrees and it was expected to rise to seventy degrees by early afternoon. So there was no reason to further delay the hardening-off process.
I decided to move the cool weather vegetable crops, the herbs, perennials and hardy annuals to the farmer's porch for four hours. Even though they were in a shady, protected area, they nonetheless looked limp and moderately unhappy with their change of environment. I will repeat today's schedule for the next few days, and increase the length of time to six hours by Wednesday. Then I will move them into sunshine for a few hours each on Thursday and Friday and gradually increase their length of exposure over the next weekend. By the end of next week, the plants will be well on their way to living in the hoophouse or outdoor beds. The hardening-off process takes me anywhere from eight to ten days in total.
Postscript #1 - The seeds in the red cherry pepper containers have germinated.
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