Apr 8th, 2023 Saturday Sunny
To follow the guideline “stay warm in spring, and stay cool in autumn”, a saying of Chinese folk wisdom (delaying the changing of clothes to allow your body to better adjust to the seasons), I still have my winter clothes on. Nevertheless, the increasing daylight each day and the early buds on puschkinia are clearly sending the signal: spring is here!
What does that mean for all the baby peppers, eggplants, and okras that we started indoors almost two months ago? It is time to get ready for the outside world!
This is a process called “hardening”, exposing the indoor plants to the outside weather bit by bit (I usually start with just one hour of outdoor time a day, then two hours, then three, and so on), so they can feel more at ease once transplanted into the garden soil.
The first year we did gardening, we were hesitant to do hardening, partly because we were not sure about the timing – even during relatively warm spring days, the air still felt chilly and crisp, sometimes with a breeze that seemed a little too powerful. Were these cute delicate plants, ones that we witnessed their daily growth since the very beginning, ready to face the challenges? Were they tough enough? What if they perish?
As a result of these concerns, while we did go through the hardening process, we were very particular about the days and times of the “outdoor playtime”. The plants were not let out if there was wind, low temperature (less than 50 F), or high ultraviolet light. By the end of the hardening procedure, we thought that the plants were prepared.
They were NOT. At least some of the plants were not – soon after they were relocated, the ground cherries had whitening leaves, a sign of getting too much sunlight that the plants were not used to yet. They did recover after a few weeks, but their growth were noticeably set back.
That was OUR fault. Had we been less protective during the hardening phase, we would have given these plants a better start of their life outside.
The second year, we learned from our mistakes, and I did the hardening faithfully and systematically according to a hardening calendar, recording the condition and duration that each plant had experienced, going from one to fourteen hours.
The outcome was astonishing. All the plants had visible changes – bigger leaves to catch the sun, thicker stems to resist the wind, and some even equipped themselves with tiny thorns to ward off bugs. At the end of the hardening, they looked like they could not wait to be in nature – their real home. We smiled at each other, knowing that we finally did the right thing.
So this year, we are going to do it again. Despite all the worries and the temptation to keep our baby plants in the perfectly comfortable environment that we have created for them, if we want them to develop into able plants, we must not deprive them of the chance to become stronger.
If the plants could talk, they might complain when they faced the world by themselves for the first time, “this is hard!” But eventually, they will learn and adapt. Looking back, they would thank us for this necessary trial.
Perhaps, growing plants is not that different from raising children, after all.