Hardening off plants.

It's mid-March and has been unseasonably warm, and I had the idea of putting my plants out side. Well this is what happened:



It was windy and direct sunlight to these cucumbers, and boy did it look bad. Apparently this is wind burn/ sun burn. I did not do it correctly this is the key to hardening off plants
Take Your Time.


For the first few days, the plants should go out in a shady spot, without direct sunlight and very little breeze. Then gradually add more time, and add direct sun light. Some say it can take from one week to ten days.

To heal this plant, I brought it back in for about a weekend and it still has these burned spots, but a lot of new growth looks very healthy. I am going to attempt now to slowly harden off some of my plants so I can plant in about a week and a half. I could probably plant now, but some of the evenings might be too cool for tomatoes and peppers.

First Transplant

This week in February, I transplanted some starts from my mini seed start container into some solo party cups of different sizes. I found out that I am going to need a lot more space if I'm going to continue growing indoors.

My starts sprouted ranging from 3 days to about 10 days. Cucumbers being the 3 days, and tomatoes and peppers closer to 10 days. It may be too late, but apparently you can start seeds all together, then when they first sprout, carefully take one out at a time and plant it into its own little cup. This would be a good way to grow a lot of veges. But without any space right now for when they are larger, this wouldn't work for me at this moment.

I have signed up for a seed train, and plan on getting a lot of seeds that I will try to plant next year, or perhaps, this year (I'm thinking fall), but we will see.

1st of February..

Well I dicided to go ahead and plant seeds indoors for my garden. It has been a very mild winter and although I have no misconceptions that it will continue, this could mean an early planting season. So If done correctly most will be ready mid march to beginning of April.

Planting In January?

For this time of the season it keeps seeming to be quite warm for the times. I have not planted thinking, 'What's the point'. Now I feel like I have been missing out on planting some cold crops. So this weekend, I finally did plant some seeds. Carrots to be exact. I know it could easily freeze over in February and this could have all been a waist, but the thought behind this was, if they survive I should have enough time to take out this crop when i need to plant my summer crops, peppers for example. If they don't survive, well it was left over seeds that I wouldn't be able to use this season any ways.

So we will see. I am wanting to try broccoli also, but I will probably try starts inside.

Late Year Gardening

I realized that I could have easily grown quite a lot of good veges this fall/winter. It really did not get very cold, expect for random days. I believe I could have gotten away with more broccoli and spinach. Probably even some collard greens or other leafy greens. I would say that now later on past the wet fall days, there is very little rain, so maybe keeping some watering options available and some more fertilizer to get it growing faster.

Fall Gardening in the sun.

I am really enjoying this fall. It is the middle of December and it is still sunny out and mid 60's and some say a chance of hitting 70 this weekend. I really think that some of the summer veg's could easily continue till the end of the year with protection, but with slow growth. I really have enjoyed the little I have grown this fall. Enough Lettuce that we eat almost daily going on now for 2 or 3 months, and I haven't done much to tend to it. Some of it is a bit bitter, but I'm thinking some fertilizer through out its growth could help with that.

Some of the other things I'm growing, but are much slower are Broccoli and spinach. I just kind of took a few Broccoli starts and planted them. I would say To grow a lot more of these, especially as the cost in the grocery stories are up about $2.50 for a not so big head of broccoli.

The Spinach is a lot slower than lettuce, but it also shrinks when cooked. So even though this kind of food is relatively cheap in the frozen foods, I could see them being worth while just because of the little tending it needs.

First Frost and bitter lettuce.

Well I was wrong about a descent frost on my last blog, but this past weekend on Nov 11, we had our first real frost. In fact my volunteered tomatoes did not survive. I did get a chance to cover my lettuce garden with plastic over the nights and seems to have done well, expect for the basil that was in there didn't make it either. but so far there has only been one frost and infact this week is in the mid 70's, so November has crazy weather.

But with the crazy weather there hasn't been much rain. There has been dew in the mornings which I think has kept the lettuce from doing great. With that said, why is my lettuce bitter? The simple answer is I Don't Know. There could be a few reasons.

1) Inconsistent watering: Like I said I have not been watering my beds for fall, they are to survive on their own. But inconsistent watering will stress the lettuce and it will become bitter.

2) Heat: Even though the temps have stayed low since the lettuce has been growing well, it is still in full sun, which as we all know in S.C. is quite hot, even in the fall. So growing in the shade would be a better option.

3) Nutrition: Growth has been slow much slower than it is suppose to be, but like I said I'm letting them fend for them selves. I could have kept on a nitrogen / fish emulsion fertilizing system to perhaps keep them growing in a quicker manner.

4) Variety: The kind of lettuce can effect where it is grown. I have a couple different varieties and can notice a large difference, being the spotted lettuce is much less bitter than the variety pack I have.