I’m probably completely being nuts, but I looked at the ten day forecast from www.weather.com, and they don’t show the night-time temps dropping below 40. It is so nice outside, that it is hard to believe it is only early May. There’s no snow on the ground! Wow.
The window boxes in the basement were getting so tall that they were getting burned from touching the lights. I kept clipping things back, but I really didn’t want to clip the morning glories, you know?
So, despite our last frost date being two or three weeks away, we started bringing the boxes upstairs. That is so much work! I couldn’t really handle carrying two at a time, because you know, full boxes with flowers trailing out of them and all. So up and down the stairs, and out onto the back deck, one at a time.
We got the back deck railing all covered. I tried to put all the white boxes together this time, right near the front, which I think looks nicer. Frank brought a few to the upstairs balcony, but the majority of those are still in the basement and we’ll bring one up every time we go downstairs.
So — I didn’t harden them off, at all. Here’s my theory on that, though. The temps right now are around the same as they are in the basement, and the next ten day forecast shows mostly rain, and overcast skies even when not actually raining. So I don’t think there’s any danger of damage from a too bright sun, since there won’t be any sun, and they don’t need to adjust to an extreme temperature difference. Here’s hoping I’m right!
Some of the boxes still look a bit bare, but some of them are quite full with cascading flowers already. We got the drip irrigation all configured and working straight off, which is very different since last year we didn’t even buy it much less get it installed until mid-season. (Frank also mentioned that it’s why it’s now raining for the next ten days, because we don’t need the irrigation now!) So I have high hopes that these boxes will stay much more consistently watered now, and will thus do better.
We still need to purchase some water-soluble fertilizer to put into the tank so that they are fed consistently while they are watered.