Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
-EP273 The Art of Hardening Off: Preparing Seedlings for Harsh Weather. How To Ensure Progress In Mixed Weather, Hardening Off Young Plants & More
The weather's dramatic shift from perfect spring warmth to a chaotic mix of snow, torrential rain, hail, and wind serves as a powerful reminder that April gardening requires vigilance and protection strategies. This sudden weather whiplash threatens newly planted seedlings and emerging growth after weeks of productive sowing and planting.
Hardening off becomes crucial during these transitional periods. Whether using a cold frame to gradually introduce outdoor conditions or bringing trays in and out daily, this process gives seedlings their best chance of survival when weather turns hostile. Bio-netting and enviro-mesh provide essential protection against April's weather extremes while still allowing airflow and moisture to reach your plants. Creating proper hoop supports prevents protective coverings from damaging tender growth during wind events.
Beyond weather challenges, spring brings opportunistic pests. Pigeons swoop in to feast on brassicas and lettuces when little else is available in the natural landscape. Slugs and snails emerge with increasing moisture levels, particularly threatening dahlias and hostas as they first peek through the soil. For warm-season crops like tomatoes, daily gentle brushing of foliage triggers stem-strengthening hormones that create more resilient plants before their final move to polytunnels.
Understanding your local last frost date allows proper timing for heat-loving crops while implementing these protection strategies ensures continuous harvests through proper succession planting. These simple yet effective techniques transform vulnerable spring plantings into resilient, productive garden plots despite April's weather rollercoaster.
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
how's it going everybody, and welcome to episode 273 of master, my garden podcast. Now, since last week's episode was recorded, and that was, uh, you know, we got a great response to that episode. Um, the weather has changed slightly. So when I recorded last week's episode with siobhan from a matney garden, we were right in the middle of that beautiful spell of weather that we had, which was, you know, probably a little bit unusual in that it was longer, warmer, uh, drier, I guess, than what we would be used to in those earlier months of March and April. And then the kind of change in the weather has happened since then and it is certainly given us a very, very mixed bag across the country here and even, you know, know, locally you get serious changes. So to kind of give a give, a flavor of that and how it affects the garden.
Speaker 1:Um, so we've had, we had the wednesday of last week. We had quite a fall of snow. We had about two inches over the course of a couple of hours. Then that turned to rain, so the snow disappeared and we had torrential rain then for 24 hours. So ground that was previously relatively dry got a lot of rainfall over a short period of time. And then Friday of last week, wednesday, thursday, friday of last week, wednesday, thursday, friday of last week we got some periods of really high winds and we got a lot of rain then in the week gone out. So Friday, last Friday, for example, it rained pretty much non-stop around here for 24 hours, so it wasn't always heavy, but there was periods of really, really heavy rain within that. And, yeah, it has gone from being, in terms of weather conditions, perfect to very, very, very mixed.
Speaker 1:This week alone, we've seen april, given you know what april can do. April can give you anything from can do. April can give you anything from warm summer summer-like temperatures to winter conditions, and it can do that very, very quickly, even within the space of a day, and a good example of that was earlier in the week. We had a beautiful, bright morning, lots of sunshine, a little bit cool, but not very, very cool. A little bit of a wind there which made it feel cooler than it actually was, but there wasn't much by way of you know, it wasn't a frost or anything. And then by 12 o'clock in the day it was completely dark, almost like it was heading for for late evening, and then we got hailstones, really heavy hailstones and heavy rain on top of that, and a couple of days then of wind, and now we're back to kind of nice conditions again, looking into next week and the week coming up, we're looking at temperatures getting right back up again and, you know, hitting sort of 18 20 degrees, which is going to be, you know, that's going to be really drive growth.
Speaker 1:But the reason I'm talking about this and highlighting this is that it's it's actually really important to understand and to be aware and I said it at the time, a few weeks ago, it felt like spring and it certainly did. But there is always the the the possibility of something like this happening or going on for a period of a couple of weeks. And why it's relevant is that we've done a lot of sewing and you know a lot of the, the crops that you've sowed, some of them you'll have planted out at this stage, and they've they've gone from being in your, I suppose, under your, care for a few weeks to going out into the open ground where they're getting battered with all of this changeable weather. So everything that I've mentioned there the 24 hours torrential rain to heavy winds, to hailstones, to cold temperatures, to wind you know all of that and it has gone on for a few days and what ends up happening is your little plants that have gone out, your bulbs that are starting to peep up out of the ground. You know, your summer flowering bulbs that are starting to peep up out of the ground, things like dahlias. They've, they've uh, they're starting to change their mind about peeping up and, in terms of you know, your vegetable plants going out, they're definitely going to be feeling sorry for themselves and not thriving because they're getting battered around. So that's what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about things like hardening off, we're going to talk about precautionary measures that you can do, things that you can do to improve your success, because what we don't want to do is do all this sowing and have all these seedlings and young plants ready to go, willing to ready to go and start growing, and then they go out in conditions that are not, you know, that are not conducive to growing, and what we don't want to do is lose them. So we don't want to lose them and find that they're they're gone or disappeared or battered or broken, which will, will happen and does happen, but if we know, kind of the steps that we need to do to, I suppose, combat. That it makes it a lot easier, and there's some other things they're going to look out. So that's what we're going to talk about. Next week episode is the sewing guide for May, and again, that will be quite a big list, comprehensive list again, but we're going to be sewing all the time, but what we want to be doing is ensuring that we're able to look after these and give them the best possible chance.
Speaker 1:So what can we do? So, obviously, you're sewing your seedlings. Potentially you're putting them outside into your beds, outside, kind of four weeks later, six weeks later, depending on how they do. Then, if it's things like, you know, tomatoes and so on, they're they're not going to be ready for for going out yet. But what we can do is harden off, and there's ways of hardening off and I'll talk about the different things.
Speaker 1:Ideally, what you would have is something like a cold frame outside. So you'd have a cold frame outside, and I've spoke about cold frames before and how beneficial they are and how useful they are in the garden. But in terms of hardening off seedlings, they're a super thing to do. You take your, your seedlings in your module trays from your greenhouse and then you put them into the cold frame. So it's kind of replicating the environment that they've come from and on the you know the next day that they're out there. You leave them out there for a day or two. On the next day you can open it up a little bit, open up the cold frame a little bit, let a little bit of air circulation in, close it down again at night time the next day, open it up a bit more and over the course of four or five, six days a week you introduce more and more air by opening the, the sort of lid or the door of the cold frame more and more each day. And that process over a few days acclimatizes the plants to to the cold or to the conditions that are outside. Now they're still not exposed to the hail and things like that, but they're getting used to the temperatures, particularly now. As I said, temperatures next week are going to go right up, so that's going to be good.
Speaker 1:But that process of hardening off is quite important. You know, as we get later on in the season that will become less significant because the variability in the, in the, you know, in the weather and particularly in the temperature is not there. So you don't get necessarily hail showers once we start to go a little bit further down the line and it's the likes of those that can do real, real damage. So you can imagine if your little cabbage plants or your little lettuce plants gone out into the beds you know some of the onions and leeks and things like that just because of the nature of the leaf they't catch that much wind, they don't catch that much rain and hail, but generally leafy things. When they go out, if they're getting battered with hail or wind, they get blown around a little bit and they feel really sorry for themselves and they'll just get weak and typically then they either break off or they'll be vulnerable to something else when they're, when they're kind of weak and not thriving.
Speaker 1:So the first process is trying to harden them off a little bit. If you, if you don't have a cold frame, you know you can. Depends on how much you're doing. If you're doing a lot of sewing, you're not going to do this, but if you're doing a small bit of sewing, take in and out your trays, take them out in the morning time, allow them to get acclimatized for a few hours, or even for the day, if it's not really bad conditions, and then bring them back in for the night time and do that over the course of a couple of days and that will sort of acclimatize them to it. The you know, if you're not into moving all of those in and out, in and out, then what you, what you definitely need to be doing is, you know, open vents or doors and allowing a little bit more of that outer airflow in there. And that can be tricky as well if you've, you know, some of your, your warmer crops that don't want that. But if you are able to do that, then that that's quite important. But when we get them out into the beds, then this is where we can really kind of do things that will be really beneficial. So I've spoke about it on the podcast before.
Speaker 1:Something like bio netting or enviro, enviro mesh these are sort of names of a mesh product that is used predominantly. It's used predominantly to keep the likes of cabbage white butterflies off or carrot root fly off. It's a net that has a really, really fine hole in it but it allows airflow through them, allows moisture through as well, but it sort of breaks that hardness. But for springtime planting and for protecting against the likes of those hail showers, that really heavy, intense rain that I was talking about something like biometting, netting or enviro mesh are really, really beneficial.
Speaker 1:So in a scenario like that, you get your seedlings, you put them out, you get little wire hoops or little hoops made out of you know pipes or something like that, and you just create a hoop over it. Then you put your mesh over those hoops so it's not sitting directly on the plants. If it sits directly on the plants, you'll get that wind damage from the material blowing across and and lying down on top of the of the ceilings, which we don't want either. So you create a hoop ideally you're going to create it that it's going to be maybe two foot in the center of the bed, two foot above the plants. That's kind of what you're looking for and then obviously it's arcing out to the edges. Keep it as high as you can at the edges as well, and, you know, hold it down on the edges, whether you're using little pegs or whether you're using wire clips or little stones or however you do that.
Speaker 1:But that bio netting, enviro mesh, that netting is going to be superb at protecting those seedlings and giving them a chance over the next few weeks. So you will. You will have the likes of a hail shower, just won't be hitting them directly, really intense rain, won't be hitting them directly. You will get rainfall going through it so that you know the moisture levels will still, will still stay there. You do get good airflow through it, but they will protect and sort of break those seedlings from the brunt of of this harsh weather that we're getting and that will give them the best possible chance to start.
Speaker 1:That's really important in terms of your successional sowing as well, because if we keep sowing the seeds which we want to do because we want to have continuity of crops if we break from that, or if we plant and they just sit there and sit there for three or four weeks, then by the time the next batch are ready and the conditions are perfect, they'll be at the almost exactly the same level. You know when, when you're planting out your next batch of seedlings. So the the more you can protect and get the the current batch growing, the better chance you have of maintaining your, your continuity as a supply. So it's really important from that point of view, and obviously as well as that, that we're not wasting. You know we haven't put this energy and effort into sowing and minding these over the last few weeks that we're not just losing them straight away after putting them out. You can also, you know, be a little bit clever and keep an eye on. You know the weather conditions over the next few days and if you know that something is particularly harsh is coming, then you can just sit back for a day or two. They're better off to to to stay in your propagation area for another few days, as opposed to going out and getting battered or or blowing around the place. So keep it. Keep an eye on that as you're doing it, but continue to sew on that. As I said, next week's episode we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1:The the other factor, then the bionet, is massively important. The other thing that you can use is frost fleece. Now it's. It's quite good for, obviously, for frost, and it is good for keeping certain conditions you know, heavy rain and things off them. The only thing about it is is that it's a little bit more difficult to leave there long term. It's typically used again. You can cloche them, so put little hoops and like put it up on top of it, but because, because of the nature it's going to hold moisture a little bit more, it'll get a little bit heavier, tends to get blown around a little bit more as well. So it's not perfect for doing it. The bio netting is probably better for it. But if you do have fleece, that will be useful as well.
Speaker 1:Then ground temperatures, just in terms of sowingowing we will talk about this next week. But in terms of sowing, ground temperatures are up and down and that can you know. In terms of seedlings going out, that can mean kind of slow growth or maybe you see a burst of growth, then it stops, then it starts again and that's not ideal for for seedlings. And that's where the bio netting will, will give you a kind of a more steady. You know that environment under there will be a little bit more steady and less harsh than what, than what it would be without it. So that's important.
Speaker 1:The, the, the sowing outside now of you know things like carrots and that that's going to be very sporadic at the minute because just temperatures are up and down, moisture levels are up and down. It's just not very, very kind seed sowing weather for outside. So I actually haven't sown anything from seed directly outside yet. Obviously, carrots, parsnips, are on the agenda as soon as, as soon as I feel that there's enough, kind of seven or eight days in front of us, which it looks like there there is now you're looking at next week temperatures, as I say, up to 18 and 20 degrees Celsius. So that's, I'm happy then to get you know the likes of parsnips sown, the likes of carrots sown outside. Obviously, a lot of the seedlings are gone out and they're all not doing wonderfully, but they're. They're okay, they're fine, they're hanging in there and they are getting protected and they will, they will burst on once the time is right. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 1:The next thing to watch out for and I've suffered a little bit with this in the last week is I put out some nice cabbage plants. They actually had got off to quite a good start because they were in a you know kind of a couple of weeks before that kind of harsh weather kicked in and they were off to a nice start. And just in the last week they weren't covered, by the way, and in the last week they've got fleeced to the point where there's nothing left, only stalks with pigeons. And yeah, why not? That's what they're going to do they? They? They see an opportunity. There hasn't been much growth in nature generally over. You know. Up until now grass has been growing, but other than that, trees are still are not fully opened up yet and you know that full growth is not there. So nice little new bit of vegetation goes into the vegetable beds and the pigeons see this and great opportunity to to get something nice to eat. So they've they fleeced them. So just watch out for that. If you do have pigeons in your area, they're going to be definitely going for the brassicas particularly, and there will also certain lettuces they'll go for as well and they can get cleaned out of it quite quickly.
Speaker 1:With the moisture levels coming up, slugs will start to become a little bit of an issue. They're not just yet, because I still think it's a little bit cold. It generally feels a little bit cold and you'll know that. You know when. That when you get that warmth along with the, along with the moisture, then you will see sort of slugs and snails coming to the fore again. So just watch out for those little things I mentioned.
Speaker 1:You know flower bulbs coming up, the likes of dahlias, for example. They're peeping up now, once you know from that warm weather a couple of weeks back. They certainly have halted their progress and said hold on a minute here. Are you sure about this? And so they are. They are sitting back a little bit now but as they, as they peep up now that we have moisture, definitely keep an eye out for slugs, who will be more than happy to just come along and munch off, particularly things like dahlias at this very early stage. If they're newly established, particularly so if you've only just planted in your dahlia tubers they'll be peeping up out of ground now and that's really fresh lush foliage for slugs and snails and they'll be working just under the surface and as that new growth comes off. You mightn't even see it, it mightn't even be peeping up above the ground, but they'll peel off that. So just keep an eye out for that over the next couple of weeks, particularly with things like dahlias. Obviously you know the likes of hostas and things like that. They'll. They'll be the same. You know any of those type things slugs and snails potentially over the next week or two will be a problem.
Speaker 1:The the next thing to to do is in relation to your warmer crops, so crops that we're going to grow on in the polytunnel or greenhouse, and I'm thinking here about things like tomatoes particularly so I I know some people have theirs planted out and great, if you do, I don't. Yet I've potted on. Now they're, they're gone into a good size pot. They are doing quite well. But what? What they, what they will need again, I have an open side of tunnel so it's quite airy in there. It's cold, so if it's cold outside, it's it's coldish in there as well. But they're getting what they. What they do need now over the next few weeks, is this again a bit of hardening off. So we want them to grow, so when we get the warm temperatures they're going to grow strong.
Speaker 1:They'll grow particularly big on these warm days that we're expecting next week, and what we're looking for is we're looking to harden them a little bit. So a few little things to do here as they're, as they're growing along the foliage, just shake around the plant a little bit. It's kind of hard to do it on uh, on audio here as to what we're doing, but we're basically brushing the top. So if you have 10 tomato plants in a tray, brush the tops of them so run your hands across the top of them, kind of push them around a little bit and that will. That will trick the plant into thinking we need to strengthen up our stems and they'll send hormones into that zone and they will strengthen up their stems and thicken up their stems and that's kind of important and it's important for down the line. What we don't want is these temperatures over the next couple of weeks to keep rising and then these plants just keep growing and growing and growing and growing and not get any strength or or resilience in them. So we need to build up a little bit of resilience in the plants before we we start putting them out into the tunnels so the likes of your tomato plants, get them, give them a bit of a shake, rub your hands along the top of the foliage and do that once a day. Get into a habit of doing that and that will strengthen up the the foliage of the plants, or sorry, the stems of the plants, and that will make a big difference when they're going out in a couple of weeks time.
Speaker 1:That brings me on to the next point of last frost dates, and that's different for everyone. In fact, in some parts of Ireland, once we get kind of to the first of May, their last frost date has passed. For me here typically it's sort of the last week of May and could even be, you know, the first week of june or thereabouts. So I typically won't get tomatoes going into polytunnel until that, or at least if I do I'll be getting them in. But I'll be keeping an eye and and staying a little bit cautious on it and I know for some people that might seem like it's it's late, but just that's what suits here.
Speaker 1:If you're somewhere else where your frost date is gone or almost gone, then go for it. It's, you know there's different areas, you know. Get to know your area or whatever, and really important, but that that date, that last frost, is for your area. If you're new to garden and you're not certain what that is, just you know locally, just ask a couple of gardeners or people who are gardening the whole time what's typically the the last frost date around here. And it could be you can get little variances within within a county or within a geographical region. So again, if there's somebody local to you who's grown all the time, just ask them what's normally the last frost test and they'll know because they'll have been doing it for years and they'll give you a good steer on that.
Speaker 1:But for me here, tomatoes toughen them up over the next few weeks. The other thing you can do with them is slightly, if you get decent days where you have, you know, warmish temperatures but maybe not as warm as it might be in the polytunnel, you can put them outside for a couple of hours, put them outside for even the day, and then bring them back in at night time and that will give them that bit of resilience. Obviously then if they're outside, they'll be getting a small bit of a breeze on them, and that moving around of the plants is what I'm talking about sort of replicating by hand, moving them around to strengthen up the stems. So that's important for those. We also now are getting to, you know, the likes of pumpkins, squash, sweet corn, with temperatures coming up, and we would be talking about all these next week in the seed sowing guide. But with temperatures coming up, the likes of those guys can be got started now, or you can start to sort of do more with these, because up until now it has been has been cool enough and the opportunity to do that has been less. So all of those now, once the temperatures are coming up and once we're almost past this last frost date, then it's good to go with all of those.
Speaker 1:So there are a couple of things the the big thing is, now that we have all this sowing, we've, we've gone to this effort. We've, you know, got our potatoes in, for example, and the shoots are, are thinking about coming up over the next few weeks. Just protect those, mine, those, the last frost, keeping an eye on things like hail, which can happen anytime through april. You can get it a little bit in early may as well. But once you're aware of those things and you're able to get it a little bit in early may as well, but once you're aware of those things and you're able to give it a small bit of protection, it means that your plant doesn't get a check. So after, after you plant out, typically speaking, even in the best of conditions, a plant will just get a check for a few days as it comes out of a of a seedling tray and into the ground. But if that, if it's coming out into weather conditions that are way colder, way windier, way wetter than what you've been nurturing that that in, then that check can be just too much for them and sometimes they just don't take off after that or or worse, they, they die.
Speaker 1:So what we want to do is make that transition as easy as possible. There will be obviously a little bit of a shock going from one to the other, but if we make that transition as easy as possible, there will be obviously a little bit of a shock going from one to the other, but if we make that transition as easy as possible, then we have the best chance of success. And it means then that down the line that we're not getting, you know, our next batch is not catching up too quickly and we're able to keep those little gaps in order to have continuity of supply. So yeah, that's quite a short, short episode, but it's a really, really important one we've sort of talked about, you know, every month we talk about the seed sowing and seedlings and all of this type of thing, but the care of them for those first few weeks is vital, and you know, it's rare that we get a season that's absolutely perfect from start to finish. And this has certainly been the case, because a few weeks ago we were talking about how wonderful it was, how warm it was, how dry it was, and now all of a sudden it's kind of to flip it out and there is a coolness there, there's a lot of moisture has fallen and you have things like wind and hail, just to just to batter them around another bit. So what we're looking to do is protect, ensure that they get the best start, ensure that they're not getting as much of a check as they possibly could if we didn't do anything. And you know things like bionetting, enviro, mesh, those type products, even fleece, you know any of those that are going to just give it a little bit of a protection over these first few weeks will certainly be a huge help. So that's a bit this week's rather short episode.
Speaker 1:If you're enjoying the podcast, please share with all your friends. If I don't post much but instagram, facebook, tiktok, I'm on all of those places. The video, the youtube every week. The podcast goes up on youtube every week, so please help share it, help get the message out there. If there's ever a question did you want answered on the podcast, I've done that quite a bit. Continue to do that. If you've ever a question that you want answered, just shoot me a message on any of those places and I'll cover it in the in the podcast in the coming weeks, and that's been this week's episode. Thanks for for listening and I'll tell you next time. Happy gardening.