Transplanting Seedlings to the Garden

Up until now, your seedlings have led the good life in your climate-controlled house. The great outdoors provides all sorts of challenges to the tender, "spoiled" plant, and you need to give it some time to adapt. Remember in a previous class we said that sunlight is much stronger than indoor lights? Just like you can get a sunburn if you are exposed to bright sunshine, especially early in the season when you aren’t acclimated, your plants can also suffer from sunburn. It can even kill them! Harsh winds and temperature extremes are other environmental conditions that can stress plants. So you need to gradually acclimate your plants to outdoor conditions, and this process is called hardening off.

All indoor plants should go through a hardening off period of one to two weeks. The first day, place plants outdoors in a sheltered spot for an hour or two. Choose a location in light shade and protected from strong winds. The next day, increase the amount of time and exposure slightly, and continue to increase every day until you are leaving the plants out in full sun and overnight.

Our planting calendar tells us we should transplant our tomatoes on May 1. Before we begin the process, let’s talk about the weather. No, this isn’t small talk! You really do need to consider the weather when transplanting. Even hardened-off seedlings go through a degree of transplant shock. To minimize shock, try to transplant on a cloudy, cool, even misty day. Remember back to our discussion of transpiration. The worst day to transplant is a hot, sunny, windy day -- instead, head for the hammock! You’ll invariably damage some roots during transplanting, and hot, sunny weather can damage and even kill a new transplant.