Seed Starting Exposé!! Part III Hardening Off

For the third and final installment in the "Seed Starting Exposé" I'll try to not scare you.  This is, in short, the haaaard part. How to transition your tender sprouts in their seed trays to rough and ready young plants ready to be transplanted out into the wild. It's not easy and is the most likely place where you will end up frying your young recruits.  It's this phase that is the reason why plant nurseries are called nurseries.  These lil ones require near constant supervision as you transition them to the harsh realities of the outside world.  I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert at this phase and tell you how to easily get your sprouts ready for the real world in just 3 short days, but I will tell you that this phase is definitely more an art than a science.  I will tell you that no matter how 733T your indoor lights are, they are no match for direct sunlight so when you first move your recruits outside, set them in shade.  Next day or three, you can move on to dappled shade gradually working your way up to full sun.  The trick here is to keep them watered to the point where you don't cause dampening off (don't get the leaves wet once they have 2 true sets of leaves, water from the bottom) but keep them wet enough so that new root growth never dries out.  It's not easy to do.  The last few nights before you are ready to set them out into the ground, you want to drastically decrease the water you give them so that when you do put them in the ground and water them in, the transplants roots will sense the moisture in the real live soil you've planted them into and when they send roots out to try and get at that water the plant will be pleasantly surprised to find live soil and not potting mix that holds it.  You should be rewarded with a growth spurt once the transplant has sent roots out into the new living soil, a trick I like to use is to sprinkle a little earthworm castings into each transplant hole to give the new arrivals some food and energy to tackle setting up in their new house.

Here are some pics of a cold frame I built up against the side of the garage.  

Photos by Kristie Lawler