Train your Summer Veggie for the Outdoors

It’s half May and time to bring your summer vegetables from your indoors nursery to their outdoors garden spot.

But you can’t just put them outside. No you have to do that with a bit of special attention. You have to harden them and I am going to tell you exactly how. 

First what’s the weather like?

Yes have a look at your local weather forecast. Your summer vegetables prefer day time temperatures of 18˚C / 65F or higher and hate night time temperatures below 10˚C / 50F. So check how the temperatures are for the next 7-10 days where you live.

If I look at the weather for my area in Switzerland I can tell you that it looks like 13 and 14 May are still gonna be very wet, but after that the weather looks better, with dry not too windy conditions at temperatures around 16-18˚C. Good enough to get my summer vegetables into the garden.

Just not just like that.

You can’t just put your summer vegetables into your garden like that. They have been growing indoors for quite some weeks now without direct sunlight, no wind and no big temperature changes. They have grown up in a very protected situation and before you put them in your garden, you have to let them adapt to outdoors conditions of direct sunlight, wind etc.

You have to train them.

You do that by hardening them over a couple of day, every day outdoors for a little bit longer. Let me tell you how I do it.

On day 1, I bring my seedlings out at noon. I pick a relatively protected location for them. So still no direct sunlight and out of the wind. I leave them there for 1 hour and bring them back inside.

On day 2, I repeat this exercise just leaving them outdoors for 2 hours. On the same spot as yesterday.

On day 3, I move my seedlings to a slightly less protected spot. So into some filtered sunlight and exposed to some air movement.  They stay out for 3 hours and then come back inside. But now I move my seedlings into a light but unheated room. So they go into the guest room without heating, instead of into the comfy and warm lounge.

On day 4 they stay out all afternoon on the same spot as yesterday and spend the night again in the guest room.

On day 5 I bring them out at 10 am and won’t get them back in before 6pm. I might also move them to an even more exposed spot, probably near or on their final location in the garden. I check the weather app for the night temperatures and if they stay comfortably above 10˚C / 50F I leave them out for their first night. If temperatures fall lower I will move them either back indoors or close to the house in our roofed and shielded patio. Here goes: better safe than sorry.

On day 6 I plant my seedlings in the garden, provided it is not stormy or raining hard. In that case I just wait a day or two and my seedlings are outside during the day and in a sheltered spot at night.

Now they’re on their own.

To plant my seedlings in the garden I make a hole roughly the size of the pot they are in, fill the hole with water and then plant my plants. Make sure the are firmly placed in your garden, but avoid pushing the soil too hard as to prevent it from becoming too dense and compact. You want your seedlings being able to easily expand their root system.

Once in your garden your vegetables will grow quickly and in a few weeks you might have to start pruning them.

But more about that in a few weeks when I talk about the three most crucial gardening techniques: watering, thinning and pruning.