Toughening Up the Tomatoes

This week the bulk of the one-off sowing has now been done for the spring/early summer and my focus has switched to hardening off the indoor sown tender plants such as tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, peppers, melons, cucumbers and pumpkins. They will not survive a frost and will suffer if temperatures fall below about four or five degrees, but even if the temperature is a little warmer than that, the plants will stall and stagnate at anything below about ten degrees, day or night.

So at the moment I'm doing the twice daily shuffle - as soon as it hits ten outside (I have two thermometers, one on the covered terrace and one under a Stevenson screen in the open) I move everything outside. The plants need to get used to not only sun and rain, but breezes too. If it is too windy they'll stay inside; the roots need to be strong enough to stop the plant rocking in the ground. The spot I choose for hardening off is under the shelter of a rose covered pergola, so the sunlight is dappled and not too intense. The plan is to spend around two to three weeks getting the young plants fit to move out into the ground by the start of May. Assuming the weather is mild enough.

This year I finally cracked and invested a whole thirty Euros in a 'blow-away' greenhouse, a plastic affair so named by gardeners because of their tendency to disappear next door at the slightest puff of wind! The thermal qualities are not great, but are a nice middle road between the house at 16 degrees overnight and fully outdoors which will be too cold at four or five.

Timing is very much a juggling act and entirely weather dependent. The plants will stall or die if they are not ready when transplanted to the big wide world, but equally they'll suffer if left in small pots for too long. In cold and wet springs (2013 was dire) I've ended up potting on all my tender stuff and filling the living room with plants! 

The bulk of my other jobs for this week are pricking out and potting on. I have pots of various varieties of broccoli and calabrese that are just starting to show their first set of true leaves, plus two sorts of Brussels sprouts. of which Red Ball has never yet managed to produce edible sprouts but the colour is just so enticing! 

And then there are the melons and cucumbers; the latter are a staple (I have a fabulous recipe for cucumber curry - yes, really!) and waking up to the scent of a just ripe melon wafting in from the garden in late summer is just sensational.

But from next week I think planting out of some hardy veggies will be starting in anger, but at least almost all the beds are now ready with their straw duvets. More on that soon.