When do i transplant my Broccoli to the outside garden?
Question:Hello everyone.
This year I've decided to grow some vegitables in my father's garden. I decided to plant broccoli, cauliflower, watermellow, peppers & canalupe.
Anyway, i'm a complete beginner. I started them indoors using a pellet tray i got from walmart. (a tray with soil already it in just add seeds and water the bottom tray.) I was shocked that they actually grew. Well the peppers havn't started yet. But the broccoli is about 1 1/2" - 2" high and the caulifower is catching up.
My question is, when do I transplant them to the outdoors? Alot of sites i looked through said wait until 5-6 weeks. They'll be huge by then. I'm really not sure what to do.
Can anyone help me?
Thank You,
Answers:
Broccoli is a cold weather crop and it should be planted directly into the ground. Get in in as soon as possible. Broccoli has huge leaves followed by the Fleurette's. Peppers are a hot weather crop and will do fine if you get them planted soon. Get them all in as soon as you can. should have been in first of May but this was a strange spring. I plant mine in April and Im also in zone 6
You just posted this question so I'm assuming it's also Memorial Day weekend where you live. 2" tall plants are pretty tiny to plant out in the garden. The sun, wind, birds, etc. can be pretty hard on them when they're so small. The weather is definitely warm enough, but I would let them grow another couple of inches in pots before putting them in the garden. You do need to start putting them outside to "harden them off", which basically just means getting used to the outdoor conditions vs. the safe, warm, little greenhouse they've been growing in. Start with days, and keep an eye on them for wilting. Then start leaving them out 24 hours until they seem sturdy enough to live in the open. This is without the greenhouse cover, and if you haven't transplanted them into at least a 2-3" pot you need to do so.
Broccoli is a cool-weather vegetable. It's best planted "as soon as the ground can be worked", which means as soon as the ground is no longer completely soggy from the winter snows.
It should, ideally, be well-established long before the "date of last frost", which is the latest date at which temperatures are expected to fall below freezing, in your area.
If, as is likely but depends on where you live, you have waited considerably past the ideal time for your broccoli to go into the ground, date-wise, you still can grow it. But you can't simply plant it normally, because the summer heat will make it "bolt to seed" too soon, making it produce florettes when the plant is too small, and then making them bloom before they're big enough to be worth eating.
The ideal solution would be for you to put it in an "eastern exposure" area, where it will get sun mainly first thing in the morning, but will be heavily shaded from an hour or two before true noon (not the fake noon of daylight savings time), until late in the day. Broccoli grows best with lots of sunlight, but hot weather does more harm than extra light does good.
I have grown broccoli successfully in mostly-shade, with only a short time of morning sun, all through the summer when normally place broccoli would be ruined.
Because of the stress caused by summer growing, be sure to give the broccoli companion plants. In this case, you might choose geraniums to repel cabbage worms, mints to repel aphids, and borage and nasturtiums to attract predatory insects. You actually plant them among your broccoli, where they do the above pest-preventing functions, plus cool the air around the broccoli (through evaporation of moisture from their leaves) and provide ground cover to stabilize moisture in the heat.
About mid -April where you are . This year , as soon as they have 2 true leaves.
Transplant them now!
Space them about 18" apart when planting.
In a few weeks, you can fertilize them with fish emulsion.
More Related Questions & Answers...