![]() ![]() This effectively decreases sun exposure until the plants have adjusted to full-sun conditions. Start with a couple of layers, and remove them one at a time over the course of several days. I recommend using floating row cover to partially shade the plants. If you don’t have a full-sun location in which to gradually transition the plants, moving to the open garden bed can be a shock to the plants. If you are taking your plants to a full-sun location to be planted in the ground, hardening off can be tricky. So, during hardening off, keep the plants elevated and, ideally, in your line of sight to avoid disaster! Rabbits and mice especially love young foliage, and they will make quick work of your plants. Young, tender pepper plants (and other veggies) are a tasty treat for some common wild animals. Don’t leave young plants on the ground outdoors.Start this as soon as the seedlings sprout and rotate the trays to keep things even. As I said before, running a gentle fan breeze indoors can help prepare the plants for normal outdoor winds. Expose young seedlings to a breeze indoors.Simply check the weather for any strong winds and work around it. Your young pepper plants will be relatively weak coming from the indoors. In addition to avoiding direct sunlight early on, you should avoid windy days, too. If you live in a location that doesn’t get much overcast, start in a shady spot in the morning or afternoon for the first 2-3 days. The plants will not tolerate much, if any direct sunlight. For the first few days that your plants spend outdoors, choose a shaded area (or an overcast day). Each of these were learned through trial and error, and knowing them now will save you the headaches! There is no strict schedule for moving the plants outside, but we do have some guidelines to help ensure your plants adjust properly.īefore we get into the steps for how to harden off your plants, I’d like to share some important tips that you should know about. This gives them enough time to gradually adjust to the outdoors until the plants are fully acclimated. Generally speaking, start hardening off pepper plants about 2-4 weeks prior to moving the plants outdoors permanently. So, when should you start the process of hardening off pepper plants? This will depend on two things: outdoor temperatures and the proximity to your transplanting date. This will allow some cooler air to reach your indoor plants and expose them to colder temperatures early on, better preparing them for natural swings in temperatures outdoors. This helps build a stronger stem while the plants are young.Īnother method to train young pepper plants for the outdoors is to crack a window at night. One method we use is an oscillating fan to mimic wind. In our growing guides, we always recommend exposing your indoor pepper plants to some of these factors when possible. This process can take 2-4 weeks depending on each plant’s final planting location. Since the plants will need to adjust to deal with all of these factors, we must slowly transition our peppers to the elements. Here are a few things that will be new to plants when they move outside: We keep the temperatures constant, the wind at bay, and we use grow lights. However, indoor climates are very different from the outdoors. After several weeks of growth inside, the plants will of course need to move to the outdoors to mature and bear fruit. ![]() Many gardeners start their pepper plants indoors to extend the growing season and get healthy harvests. Let’s get started! Hardening off pepper plants. We’ll cover when to start the process, how to gradually increase sun exposure, tips to keep in mind, and some methods for in-ground plants. In this article, we will share our method for hardening off pepper plants properly. This process is known as ‘hardening off’ the plants, and must be done gradually to avoid stressing them. This means moving the pepper plants outdoors, into the elements. This means that, for the first several weeks of a pepper plant’s life, it is living inside.Īt some point, we need to allow the sun to take over the job of our grow lights. If you have read one of our pepper growing guides, you know that we always start our seeds indoors. ![]()
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