Not trusting my own judgment very nearly killed 1/3 of my seedlings today.
I stopped by the garden center yesterday, ostensibly to pick up some vermiculite, but mostly so that I could wander around and stare longingly at the fruit trees. I got to chatting with the woman working there and mentioned that I'd just started hardening off a bunch of my seedlings, though "not the warm-season stuff like tomatoes & basil."
"Oh, no" she insisted, "you absolutely should be setting those out by now!"
Hmm. Not from everything I'd read. But while I was hauling other plants outside this morning, I thought, "perhaps she's right. She probably has more experience than me." It was shady outside, and I was feeling impatient to get everything planted, so out went all of the flats. What should have registered in my brain, besides the shade, was the fact that it was in the low 40s outside.
What I brought back in were some decidedly unhappy-looking and limp plants. Now that they've been back inside for several hours, most of them look like they'll make it. They won't be going back out till mid-May.
All of the seedlings moved up in the world today, though, leaving the warm basement and taking over my kitchen table. Hauling trays up and down the stairs in order to set them outside was just not cutting it.
[Let's just pretend there are some lovely pictures here of my kitchen table covered in green, growing things, shall we? As soon as I have a functional laptop again I'll actually post some non imaginary ones.]
No comments:
Post a Comment