Grow Your Own Food: Hardening Off and Re-potting

Nothing sadder than a sunburned leaf...

Ah yes, spring has finally sprung in Michigan and my eager little plants are ready to move out of the apartment and onto the balcony, mostly. Turns out moving gardening to outside is not that easy. See, plants that start their life inside a home don’t have to deal with things like nighttime temperature changes, wind, rain, heavy sun, and all the other things that make most plants strong. In fact, besides losing leaves from sudden wind and possible freezing at night, plants can actually get sunburned!

So hardening off is not a step to be skipped over, so how do you do it? And more importantly, when? Here in Michigan we have two seasons: winter and not winter, so knowing when to let certain plants go outside is key. See, it all depends on temperature outside, certain plants can be fine in the cold, others need it hotter. Oddly enough, this information is actually a bit hard to find online, but I’ve managed to parse it together. Below is a chart with a lot of common plants and a few of my favorites in terms of temperatures:

When the temperature outside hits the number your plant needs, what you need to do is to start off by letting them sit outside for an hour in the shade. Time it if you have to, just a quick playtime outdoors before they come right back in again. Next day, do the same but up it to two hours. Third day up it to three hours and by the fourth day, they should be fine to sit outside all day and maybe into the sunnier areas of your property. If it's warm enough, you can even start experimenting with letting them stay out overnight, but over all it should be done over the span of a week or two. Yes this is a lot of work and yes if your plants are big enough it will be hard to lug them back and forth, but hopefully unlike us you did not start your seedlings so early that they were adults by the time it was nice out. Bad luck with weather and bad timing make things difficult.

Everyone gets to play outside!

Now, one other thing you should probably do after everyone is hardened off and ready is replant your little dears into bigger pots so they are less big plants in little pots and have some room. How can you tell if your plant is desperate for a re-potting? If its growth is slowing down, not flowering very nicely, the soil dries very very quickly and if you are getting a lot of leaves dropping, it has been wanting to be re-potted for a while. If you want to know for sure, you’ll have to get your hands dirty and take the plant out of its pot. If the roots are fully formed to the shape of their container and trying to escape out the bottom, it needs re-potting.

Also known as being "root bound", this group of tomato plant roots went all over the pot finding every last space of dirt.

Poor things, right?! Thankfully there is a solution. First you are going to want to prepare their new home. No use taking them out without having their new pot ready, right? Get a mix of fresh topsoil and some fertilizing agent, I like to use manure even though it does stink. If it gets the job done, I can deal with it. If your plant likes a certain soil type, make sure to add what it needs to grow big and strong. Mix everything together into the pot so it’s not like a parfait of dirt but more like a well mixed dough of dirt. Once you think everything is mixed well together, you’re ready to move them in.

When it comes to re-potting, the hardest step is often getting the plants out of the pot and separating them if they need to be divided. In the pic above you could see that these three tomato plants were seemingly fused together in a rats nest of roots. The easiest way to get plants free of pots like that is to hold the top of the dirt steady while flipping the container upside down, tapping on it if necessary to scoot the plant out. If the pot is too big for you to flip, tip it on its side and roll gently. It may take some effort, especially if you got roots coming out of the bottom, but it will be worth it.

Next step is to pull them apart gently, you don’t want to yank or rip because you could damage the roots and the plant will not be happy with that. Once you have them undone, set them aside and dig as many holes as you need, keeping in mind the length of the roots. Place your plants gently into each hole and cover it with dirt until it can stand up easily. Now is also the time for replacing tomato cages or other methods of keeping your plant upright. When everyone is planted and set, add a final layer of dirt up to the leaves of the plant to help keep its root structure going strong. Give everyone a nice drink of water and enjoy how your plant looks in its new home. Now everyone is happy outside!

One big happy garden!

So tell me in the comments what you are growing or what you’d like to grow in the future! I know one of these days I’d love to try blueberries again, we tried once but the rabbits got to them and we sort of gave up. Also feel free to share any other tips and tricks of gardening below. See you all next Horror Tuesday!