Hardening off Tomatoes

With the weather warming up, it's about time to start thinking about moving our tomato plants into the garden.  The onslaught of rain that we've had over the past couple of weeks, however, has made the garden seem more like a swamp.  That's okay, though. While the ground is drying out, we'll move them out from under the grow lights in the utility room and outside into the 'hot-house' or cold-frame I made by putting a couple of hinges on some old windows that someone was throwing away.

I moved out half of the tomato and pepper plants from under the grow light and put them in the cold-frame that I set up on the back patio.  The process of hardening off just gets the plants acclimated to the variety of outdoor weather that includes warmer days, cooler nights, wind and rain. I'll put half of the plants in tonight and the other in on the next night.

Here are the remaining tomatoes that we'll leave under the lamp just as insurance. I'd hate to move them all outside and then have them all crash.

I watered them real good, but notice that the leaves on the tomato plants are yellow.

I think they are telling me that they need some fertilizer and I have just the stuff to give them what they need to green back up and grow.  I use fish emulsion, which is essentially ground up, dried fish. I add a tablespoon of fish powder per gallon of water into a garden sprayer.  I pump it up and will spray it on the tomato plant leaves tomorrow once I have all the plants moved outside.  The downside to this stuff is that it stinks.  If you don't use it all in one spraying and have some leftover, I'd suggest dumping it out.  If you leave the fish emulsion fermenting in your sprayer for even one day in warm weather, you will have a powerfully smelling stew of nastiness on your hands.  (Experience talking.)

The following day I moved the rest of the plants into the cold frame.  They filled up the whole area.

Now that they are outside I sprayed them with the fish emulsion.  Hopefully, in a couple of days we'll see a nice transition from yellow leaves to healthy green ones.

In a few days, I'll remove the glass sides from the cold frame.  Then, as soon as the garden dries up, I'll get these plants into the ground in the garden.  The weather is supposed to be really nice this week.  Can't wait for that!