Spring Planting Part 3

My cute little seedlings are going through puberty and it's getting closer to planting them outside. It's becoming more important to acclimate them to colder temperatures, to make them stronger. It's like Wim Hof cold showers for your plants.

As I mentioned in part 2, this is called tempering. How I'm tempering indoors, is to turn the heat down in the sun room where they are located. Eventually they will have no heat on in the room at all. Next, I'll move the whole shelf to the garage and take the plants out onto the patio on the sunny days to give them the natural light they crave. This is a month long process. It takes patience to create strong plants, but you will save time and money replacing them. During the month, the nights become warmer and the day's average temperatures go up as well.

I'm also repotting the seedlings now, as they are leafing out over their 'baby' leaves. I'm using some cups I had left over from my daughter's graduation party last summer. I like to double cup my tomatoes. I poke holes in the bottom of the cup for drainage and then pop it into another cup, but making sure the cups don't fit tightly. To do this I use two different sized cups. Tomatoes like some air circulation coming into the bottom of the roots for rapid growth. This also allows for bottom watering.

Once your new plants are put into the garden (with loads of organic matter). Keep some plastic sheeting and frames or large gallon plastic jugs around to use to protect from those late frosts. My onions are already in their raised bed as the nights are not set to be less than freezing for the next 10 days. I have some plastic, in reserve, in case another cold air burst from Canada comes my way.

I'm also using Neem oil spray on my fruit trees right now. I've already done one application, but it was a little windy that day, so I'm going to do a second application with a sprayer. I've never produced peaches before due to late frosts and the tree did not self-pollinate as advertised. So I've added another peach tree to see if it makes a difference. I also drastically pruned the tree to focus it's energy into the remaining limbs.

The last thing I am doing right now is recycling the plugs that didn't germinate a seed. It's hard to see if the genetics of the seeds you buy are of any value until you after plant them. I noticed a few plants didn't germinate at all, so I will take the plugs and mix them up with other soil to try again with a different set of seeds. By the way, you can become a Burpee certified seller by visiting the link here. 

In the coming Newsletters, I will cover composting and making a worm farm for your garden. If you have any friends who are homeowners or future homeowners, please refer them to the Newsletter by sending them the link below. Thanks for supporting my Newsletter.

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