I have a few flats of onions that I start in my house under fluorescent lights and I will definitely not just set them in my greenhouses without first subjecting them to a few days of indirect sunlight. Even setting them on a lower shelf or the shaded floor is best if the sun is intense. Thin skinned housegrown plants are too sensitive. If you had moved them into direct sun as soon as they immerged you would be fine. When you talk about setting them in the sun for a few hours I would say to make those first few hours supervised. Watch them for signs of wilting and mist them occasionally. Each day will get easier. I know everyone is desiring to take full advantage of the sunshine but you are better to introduce plants to the outside on an overcast day.

Sun/wind scald...peppers can sometimes handle it, though. If you see new growth coming up from the apex/tip of the plant producing new leaves you might be able to nurse them through. When it comes to hardening them off, it's baby steps for the first few days. You might want to wait until you come home and start by putting them out for just a couple hours in the future for the first few days of hardening off. The wind tolerance of leaves is as important, sometimes more important, than the sun tolerance. It's all about building up a bit of outer protection on the leaves to lessen water loss and sun/wind beating down on them. It's a good idea to get them first initially used to the wind, so a shaded or part-shaded are works.

Susan, I don''t know how to predict how they will respond because it is such an abnormal year. In general, I don't like for the tomatoes to be exposed to too many temperatures below 50 degrees, so I harden them off first to daytime heat/temperatures but have them in the greenhouse every night, or indoors if I think the greenhouse will get too cold. I cannot leave anything out all night or the deer and rabbits would eat them. Generally tomato plants will tolerate cold temperatures but not frost, so just remember that in some conditions you can get frost when the temperature is as high as 38, 39 or 40 degrees. The only way to really figure out what works in these highly variable conditions is to just try it and see how it goes. I don't think I have been able to harden off the tomato plants in exactly the same way in any two consecutive years. There's always a challenge---sometimes it is high wind or hot wind and other times it is cold wind or wintery precip. You just have to kind of wing it. If you leave them out tonight, I hope you covered them with something. I don't know what your forecast low for tonight is, but mine is 42 and all my plants that are in the ground are still covered. I think tomorrow I'll finally uncover them. Dawn

digdirt wrote: There is no need to harden off until 7-10 days before planting out as once hardened off they need to be able to stay out. Can you elaborate on that? Will a hardened off seedling not continue to do well if brought back inside? I've been taking my seedlings outside on warm days, thinking I was helping them along. Is that a mistake? I'm still 2-3 weeks out from planting. Sure. Taking young plants out for an hour or so to get some sun and fresh air is one thing. Is it necessary? No. Is it beneficial? Maybe, if done very carefully. Can it be risky? Yes. But that is not hardening off. The process of hardening off is done to permanently adapt the plants to the totally new and different environment they will now be living in. Take them in and out and in and out over long periods of time and they never adapt because the environment is constantly changing. Think of it as moving. You bought a new house, go through the process of gradually moving all your stuff to it a little at a time, and 1/2 way live in both houses for a week or so with all those frustrations. Finally you settle in to the new house. Are you then going to go back to the old house to live when everything is over at the new house? Nope, once you are moved, you are moved, right? So when it is getting close to planting time they need to adapt to that environment. Gradually they go out into it, learn to live in their new house. Now if you take them back to the old house for any length of time after they have adapted to the new one, they have to re-adapt all over again and again. Make sense? _________________ Daniel - if she needs to repot later on that is fine but she sure doesn't need to do it now. And a 2" seedling would be over-whelmed in a 6" pot. And how much growth the plant has in 1 month all depends on the growing conditions provided. If they are given the proper cool growing conditions with plenty of light then a 4" pot will be fine for a month and the plants will be approx. 7-8". Will it be rootbound? Possibly but plants can survive just fine for a brief period until they can be planted. If they are exceptionally warm conditions with not enough light then yeah they will be taller and lanky. But even transplanting to a larger pot won't prevent that from happening. If you are happy with cow fiber pots that's fine but I have tried them and been sorely disappointed. The issues associated with using them are well documented and have been discussed here may, many times. The search will pull up all sorts of discussions about them as well as Jiffy pots, many with pics of the problems. They do not compost in the soil unless you have lots of clay that will retain water for a long time around them. Folks have posted pics of them in the soil a year later. Roots do not penetrate them as advertised unless the pots are kept overly wet. Folks have posted pictures of pulling up plants with the pot still intact and filled with roots but none outside the pot. To keep the pots wet enough that means the plants have to be kept overly wet since the pots pull the water right out of the soil. That leads to root rot and stunted plants, yellowing leaves, fungus gnats, etc. It's your choice but IMO plastic pots will always outperform any of the fiber pots. If one wants truly direct planted pots of some kind use newspaper pots. Dave This post was edited by digdirt on Mon, Apr 29, 13 at 18:39