Early planting, possibly to early.

Over the last few weeks we have been busy planting all the plants that we had sprouted inside under our early planting scheme.  We really took the opportunity to try and time it with the full moon, among other things, but in the end we feel it was all to early.  

The reasons we think that it has proven too early is because many of the plants have been really struggling - particularly for some of the types of tomatoes. Not all of them though - will have to confirm which ones once they start growing.


We tried to ensure the transition from inside to outside was gentle by staging the move.  We first spent a week with the plants outside during the day and then back in at night, then outside over night on warm nights, and then tried to time the plan with the full moon.
We encountered a couple of problems.

• Firstly, altough the idea to introduce the plants outside gently was probably correct, we put them on the deck in front of the house where they were expossed to wind which frankly smashed them.  The wind was hardly noticeable but because the plants had been so protected inside they had no hardiness whatsoever.  I think we lost all our cucumbers and took a lot of damage to the tomatoes
  
• Secondly, although we planted some with the full moon, the wind was too strong and again damaged the plants
• Although nights are generally about 4 or 5 + one of two nights of close to 0 we think have really had a big impact on the tomatoes.  Many of the plants that were planted ages ago with the full moon have made no progress, and are not showing any improvement after almost 2 weeks.

It's not been all nightmares.  The peas and taken well, although they don't seem to have really grown at all over the last 2 weeks.  But they do seem happy to just sit there - hopefully they'll therefore be well settled by the time it warms up.

What we've learnt:

• That we probably needed to hold on for planting for another month to the next full moon.  Aim for about end of March / April time
• Plants liked it when planted just after rain as the soil was soaked through.
• The pyrimid of needs for planting pre-seeded plants in order of priority is: No wind, just after rain days, full moon, sunny days.  Wind is really a killer for early
• Tomatoes in particular needed another month (although there is an early variety)