Hardening All Your Spinach Plants Outside

Before setting your plants outside in their permanent home there is one important step you need to proceed with.  You need to make sure that you acclimate your spinach plants to the weather and temperature changes that it will face in the garden.  People who forget this step usually end up with a poor harvest and wonder why it happened.  Hardening is something that all gardeners face especially if you grow your plants inside or if you buy them from your local greenhouse.

So far I have only placed a couple of spinach plants outside to get used to the weather and cooler temperatures.  I have recently placed the rest of them to acclimate to these conditions that will make the transition from inside to outside permanently easier.  You will be doing this for all your plants, but right now the temperatures are still too cold to begin placing anything else outside.

The temperature outside hits a low of just above 30 degrees which is still warm enough for your spinach plants to survive.  This only occurs at night or early in the morning, but there is no danger of frost at the moment.  You can always cover your plants with a simple cloth or a clear polypropylene plastic that will easily protect them from extreme temperatures if this was to happen.  At the moment temperatures are going to reach into the low fifties the rest of the week which is perfect for growing delicious spinach.

Half the plants were from the first planting set while the other smaller ones were from the second planting which I did about a couple weeks after the first.  Many of the seeds were not sprouting and I had to decide whether or not to grow any more plants.  I took the pots that had not sprouted and placed about four seeds in each.  You can see from the picture that some are growing good while others are small.  I will just have to remember to wait to plant the smaller ones until they get bigger and their roots stronger to make transplanting them easier.