It’s finally warmed back up here!  The sun has come out to play- and seems to plan on sticking around for a while.  My tomato plants, while still growing, just have not seemed anywhere near as healthy as last years plants.  I’m going to have to do some researching and learn how to properly grow plants via grow lights.   In the meantime though, it was time to upgrade my tomato plants one more time to larger pots.  These are the last pots they will be in before planting in the ground.  They went this time from 2-inch cell packs to 4-inch stand alone pots.  I used a basic potting mix for the soil that I planted them in.

Now that they are in larger pots, there is room for their roots to spread out, which is what we’re really hoping for in this last phase of potted plant.  In a perfect world, at this stage, the tomatoes would be watered from the bottom of the plant, allowing for the roots to reach and try to suck up the water themselves.  The problem I have with bottom watering is that it can leave the soil too wet if you don’t do it properly.  So I will probably just continue watering from the top.

Which brings us to the ever-important subject of hardening off.  All garden plants grown indoors need a period of time where they can adjust and become acclimated to the elements outside.  My plants have been pampered inside the house- but just setting them outside for good can cause dozens of problems with plants.  A good gust of wind could topple the tender stems over, the leaves could become sunburned, and the plant could not know how to react to bugs.

So yesterday I assembled my portable greenhouse rack- minus the plastic cover.  I set it under the apple tree in the yard, where it would still get a good deal of sun, but that for part of the day, the sun would be dappled by apple tree leaves.  My plants are out there right now as I type this, getting their first taste of late-spring sunshine.  They will sit on that rack for just two hours today.  Tomorrow I will extend that to three, four the following day, and so on.  When they are not on the rack in the sun, they will be moved to my screen porch, where they will not get any sunshine, but will still have the benefit of the warm air and the gentle breeze blowing through.

The peppers will join the tomatoes later this week in being potted up and hardened off.  But for now, I’m very happy to see the progress towards the final planting in the ground.  Now my focus returns to the yard full of weeds- and the ever-present task of clearing out the beds for planting in just a few weeks.  I have a long way to go yet.