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hardening

rabid48 said:
Anybody have any experience on whether or not plants that get some indirect sunlight from windows do better with hardening off vs. plants that go directly from lights?
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My Datil overwinter spent most of its time in front of a south-facing window at the office, it hardly missed a beat when I stuck it outside this spring. The oldest leaves are very slightly sunburnt, but on the whole the plant adapted quickly.

Wayright's method also works well if you're able to baby your plants for a bit. I did something similar last year, moving the plants into the sun and then moving them into to shade when they started to droop, and had a few more or less hardened off in a few days.
 
I started my plants in a south facing bay window which gets about 4 to 6 hrs of direct sun light and gets pretty hot. Do plants which are exposed to natural light anyway need to be hardened off as long?
 
I had some plants go from grow room (under fluoros) to greenhouse (78% light transmission) with no issue. Then I moved them to full sun, again no issue. Once they were in full sun for a week with no burning, they went into the ground covered by this:

http://www.ken-bar.com/srmsilver.html

After 1 full day on the silver mulch, about 1/3 of my TS plants have burned significantly and about 1/8 of my bhuts have burned very slightly. I was very surprised that they burned at all. Luckily I think they will all survive it.
 
I am currently trying to harden my plants off. I was wondering what night time air temperature should be when I decide to leave them out all night? My search bar-fu has not turned up an answer. I have Bhuts, red and yellow scotch bonnet and Facing Heavan peppers (not too sure if that is correct). Anyway the night time temps in Cincy very wildly right now itll bee in the upper 40's lower 50s tonight but will be dipping into the thirties by the weekend. Thanks for the help!
 
Ideally if you're just starting to harden them off don't expose them to anything below ~50, but after a few days they shouldn't care, albeit if temps are still dropping into and below the low 40s then it may be a bit early to think about hardening them off. I always have space issues so I end up hardening them off much earlier than I should, but really, putting plants out when it's still relatively cool will slow their growth considerably.

For practical considerations, if you have the space, you're better off potting plants up and keeping them indoors until night temperatures consistently stay above 50, as they will be able to grow that much faster compared to plants that were stuck outside early. The problem I ran into last year putting mine out early is that most of them ended up having leaf fungus issues and completely defoliated, and since they were growing so slowly on top of these issues, it took them about 2 months to get back to being healthy. I would have been at least as well off had I started my plants 2 months later and set them out at that point.
 
it's good to drape some light shade cloth over them to protect them from the sun it also keeps them a little warmer at night
something like this http://swiftsgardeni...nd-flowers.html
I start off with a double layer and go to single layer a week later. There will be plenty of light coming trough for the plants to grow.
 
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