With overnight now in the double digits, many gardeners are hoping to get their greenhouse treasures into the ground.
According to local garden guru and Sask Polytech’s Ag and Food Production Program Head Sherri Roberts, the process of 'hardening' can ensure those sheltered plants thrive. She said it's akin to how humans acclimate ourselves to summer, when temperatures get warmer than we are used to experiencing.
"Our bodies weren't acclimated to those higher temperatures because we've just come through the big freeze, and plants are the same. When you're in a greenhouse, you're in a set environment and they keep greenhouses very regulated, on their temperature, on their humidity, on their watering, so those plants are in an ideal environment," she explained. "People have a tendency to take those plants right out of the greenhouse, take them home, and put them in the ground, and then they can't realize why, 'My plant looks kind of wilty', or, 'It doesn't look very happy', or, 'What did I do? Did I kill it?' No, your plant needs a chance to acclimate to a change in environments."
Roberts shared on what to do to harden the plants.
"You come home with your flat of your plants, and you set it outside for a couple hours, let it sit out there in those temperatures and get used to that. Then at night, we all know the temperatures dip and get cooler, and then you need to bring that flat in, either into your garage or into your house, and each day you need to lengthen the amount of time that you keep it outside so that it gets used to the air temperatures outside, and then it's not stressed when you put it in the ground."
She said not doing this process can result in stressed-out plants.
The smaller greenhouses, she noted, sometimes take care of this stage for their customers.
"When I was growing up, we had a greenhouse in our town, and the lady would acclimate most of the plants herself. She'd have great big tables outside, so she would bring the plants out of the greenhouse and then start this acclimation process or hardening off outside for you, so then when you bought those plants, they were already hardened, and you could take them home and put them right in the ground,. But nowadays, a lot of the garden centres, they don't have that space because it took a whole huge amount of space of tables outside."
"If you buy now from inside a greenhouse, bring them home, pop it in the ground, you're putting that plant under tremendous stress, and you may or may not see its demise."