Photo by Gerald Holmes, Strawberry Center, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, .īegin hardening off seven to 10 days before your area’s frost-free date. Sun damage on the leaf tips of recently transplanted pepper plants. The goal of hardening off is to help your plants adapt to their new garden home without stress. Tender seedlings that suddenly transition to colder or hotter temperatures may become stunted, experience leaf discoloration or die. An indoor-grown plant thrust into full sun may wilt or have tissue browning on the leaves. Rapid swings between climate extremes, even if within its ideal range, can lead to damage and stress. Each plant species has an ideal range for light, temperature and moisture level. While vegetable transplants can eventually thrive in a sunny spot in your yard or patio, you will increase your chances of success by gradually easing them into your garden conditions. Indoor plants are not adapted to outdoor climate conditions and rely on their gardener to help them transition to light, heat and wind of the outdoor garden. Vegetable transplants are started indoors before the frost-free date to protect them from climate extremes outdoors. Gardeners using vegetable transplants should plan for the process of hardening off their seedlings to outdoor conditions. If your GH temperature is going to 85F you might want a bit more ventilation - most places run vents full-open when the temperature exceeds 70F.As we approach May and June frost-free dates across Michigan, it is time to prepare for transplanting warm season vegetable plants such tomatoes, peppers and squash that do not tolerate frost. Since you'll be watering you can keep doing that, but you may want to cut back a bit just because they will use a bit less when they are colder. I do watch the plants fairly closely for any signs of distress. For a longer schedule, you could make the increment more like 150% time rather than double-time from day to day [30, 45, 1:08, 1:41, 2:20.) I freely admit to not being so regimented about it, but I start moving my plants out when the conditions outside are favorable, and increase their time outside gradually, without getting overly clock-watchy about it. If you care to get fussy, say 30 minutes on day 1, 1 hour on day 2, 2 hours on day 3, 4 hours on day 4, 8 hours on day 5, 16 hours on day 6 and leave them there on day 7, as one option for a schedule. In your case the different conditions are the greenhouse, not "outside" (or at least not yet) but otherwise the process is similar - move the plants into the greenhouse for a short period, possibly with some artificial shade at first, or taking advantage of a time when the greenhouse is in partial shade, if that happens. Principle is basically the same gradual acclimation to different conditions. I'm wondering if someone could suggest (in detail, ideally) a good process for going from indoors to outdoors? Thanks! I expect to be watering them regularly and hoping for them to get pretty big & stocky. I'm hoping to have them in the greenhouse for 3-5 more weeks (depending on the plant) at temperatures between 40☏ at night and 80-85 max during the day. Most instructions talk about going from ~30 min outside in light shade to a full day over the course of 7-14 days (not very specific, really), and to cut back on watering. When I look up instructions for hardening off plants, they seem to be preparing plants for being put in the ground. mentioned in a previous post that I need to "transition" the plants, but I'm not sure exactly what that means. Now I'm planning to move them outside into a greenhouse I just built. ![]() It seems to work great - with a heating pad under one of the flats it's warm, humid and plants grow like crazy. I've been growing some starts in this little hot-house thing I made after seeing something similar at a local gardening store.
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