We’re well underway with phase 2 of our hardening off process! This is basically the revolving door, where our goal is to get from indoor grow room to the semi-heated greenhouse as soon as is feasible.
In phase 2, we’re talking almost everything else that’s ready! We want to reduce our grow lighting as soon as possible as they really makes those electric bills quite unpleasant to look at!
We continue to hold back our peppers, these just aren’t suited for temperatures below about 50 Fahrenheit. We’ll treat basil the same way, but ours are still in the germination process at this point. Both these will be hardened off once we get pretty close to last frost.
We highly prefer what the “real sun” can do, at least compared to grow lights. While quality grow lights can make great garden starts, the sun does so much better! Plus, it works for free, so long as you have a safe place temperature-wise for those plants.
You’ll note that our tomatoes are in this batch. Last year, we did some pretty extensive testing where we brought tomatoes down to the mid-30’s Fahrenheit for at least a week or so. They did fine, in fact, they even seemed quite happy about it!
As long as you can guarantee frost-free conditions, the actual temperatures aren’t super critical. I’m not arguing for freezing your plants, but we’ve been surprised by just how tolerant most plants are. Even so called plants that “require” warmer temps like tomatoes.
It might “seem” like we’re quite cavalier here. We aren’t, we have things tightly dialed in. But, we do have growing conditions that allow us to explore the “absolute limits” that, in many ways, contradict conventional wisdom. We need to know this information, as do you!
