As I get closer to planting my first successful vegetable garden, I discover more and more things that I don’t know about growing things. First off, you need a lot of plants for an ecological gardening plot — way more than what is required for planting in rows! For this reason, I decided to grow my own seedlings. Not only can I get more variety, but it’s a considerable money saver. Those seedlings can get expensive.

So, there I was at Home Depot looking for seed trays, and an enthusiastic, helpful employee started chatting about the different options for starting seeds, grow lights, systems, and a bunch of other issues that I have absolutely no experience with. The orange-aproned man eventually figured out that I was not, in fact, someone with a green thumb, when the phrase “hardening off” came up.

“Um, what?” I said.

“Hardening off. It’s how you adapt your indoor seedlings to life outside. You can’t just stick them in the ground from their indoor environments,” the employee said.

As soon as he mentioned that, it made perfect sense — the seedlings indoors have no stress like wind or rain. When I got home, I looked up how to harden off the seedlings, and this is what I found out:

• Indoor seedlings are spoiled. They have the perfect amount of water and warmth, so they grow up expecting these same optimal conditions.
• As a result, the plant is vulnerable. The cuticle (skin) is thin, which makes dehydration a greater danger when it gets outside. The stems are thinner because they don’t expect to have to stand up to wind. The leaves aren’t expecting the intensity of sunlight, so like pasty nerds on a summer’s day, they may just burn up without a little adaptation time. When the transplants get out in the cold, the shock will “set them back,” and the plants may be less productive as a result.
• The answer is to simulate the outdoor stressors. When the seedlings emerge, you just jiggle them. Then, when they’ve gotten a leaf or two, you can use a gentle fan inside to simulate wind, or fan or them with a paper fan a couple times a day. When they’re stronger, you can brush them softly with a feather duster. This will make the stems grow thicker so that they can stand up to the wind.
• A week or two before transplanting, start exposing them to more and more variations in temperature, and get them used to sunlight before sticking them in the ground. You start with a couple hours in the shade and gradually increase exposure time until they’re ready to be transplanted.

This just seems logical. After all, during the first park day both my son and I are a bit dizzy from all the direct sunlight… why would plants be so different? Living things adapt to their environment, and going from indoor paradise to outdoor conditions would be like moving from Florida to Alaska. Here’s hoping that my beginner plant-raising abilities will help them grow big and strong.

Here is the article, written in an effusive gardener’s style: http://www.gardenguides.com/3024-bracing-up-hardening-off-transplants.html.

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