Harden before you plant

Let's not make this any more complicated than this: Put your plants outside in the shade where they won't be exposed to much wind. Leave them there, day and night for three days. On the fourth day, give them an hour of sun in the early morning and in the late afternoon or put them in dappled shade all day long. You are then good to go. Your plants will be hardened off to sunburn and the drying effect of wind.

You can plant outdoors this weekend assuming you hardened off your starts. The birch leaves are beyond the size of a squirrel's ear and the forsythia bloomed last week, an indication that soil temperatures are above 50 degrees in most Southcentral locations. Again, if you haven't hardened off, don't plant. Take comfort in knowing that some sourdough gardeners wait one more week anyhow and claim the warmer soil means less shock to the plants and better growth.

Since I am against rototilling (unless you are taking a forested area and converting it to gardens), the question that next most often arises is how to plant in hard soil? Obviously you have to get the plant or seed into the soil. For seed, use a stick, dowel, screwdriver or your finger to make individual planting holes. Or take a hoe or a long stick or a 2x4 and put a little pressure on it and pull it down a row to make a furrow in which to put seeds. A bit deeper and you can put plants in. A trowel works for individual plants as well.

The idea is not to disturb all the soil in the garden. It is a lot of work for one thing, and I am against that. In addition, however, turning soil by hand or rototiller exposes weed seeds (i.e. chickweed), destroys soil structure (increasing the need to water and making it harder to do so), results in compaction and has negative impacts on worms, fungi and other members of the soil food web who should be out there working with you in the soil, not chopped up into little bits.

Next: Do you find the root system of last year's transplants still in the shape of the container you took them out of when you transplanted them from the nursery? Finding such root systems is not good. When you transplant stuff, look at the root systems when the plant comes out of the container. If you see lots of roots, chances are the plant is forming a root ball and growing in on itself.

To prevent root balls -- and this applies to cell pack plants and individually potted plants -- carefully open up that ball from the bottom using your fingers or slice up the bottom half the root mass with a knife or trowel. Then turn out the halves as you transplant so roots will grow out into the soil instead of into a ball. Your plants will do much better than last year's.

Clean up underneath shrubs and hedges of any sort and reapply missing mulch, which should be available from the leaves you collected for this purpose. Your neighbors may have bagged some for you, so check the night before refuse collection in your area if you are lacking. Anyhow, if you do minimal work now with a hoe you can get emerging butter and eggs, that noxious invasive taking over Southcentral, as well as tiny chickweed. Go along fences, around sheds, anyplace there is warmth and do the deed while it is an easy chore.

Go out and garden. It is time, but just in case you already forgot the beginning message, you really do have to harden off. Plant next week. There are plenty of other things to do in the yard in the meantime.

Jeff Lowenfels is a member of the Garden Writers Hall of Fame. You can reach him at teamingwithmicrobes.com or by calling 274-5297 during "The Garden Party" radio show from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KBYR AM-700.