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Quote from: tim on March 31, 2005, 19:40:53
Scatter?? Who ever suggested that?

AND - while we are about it - sowing small seeds? Mix carrots with sand? NO WAY. Just moisten the tip of your finger & touch a seed. Then ease it off into its proper place. An inch away from the next. So easy!!

I use the end of a very small dibber that came with labels from Poundstretcher.  I wet the end by just dipping it in the compost in the cell it has just planted.  The seed falls of on its own with the slightest touch of the compost so I can sow one to a cell for just about everything - although I haven't tried celery

I pick up the seeds with a piece of broken glass with the seeds in a saucer

WRT hardening off, I tend to look for a decent spell of weather and then just pop stuff outside (or into a cold greenhouse if that's where they're going). It does mean you can end up with triffids indide though.

Phew. Well I'm glad I'm not the only non-hardener-offer.

I've been "hardening off" hardy plants that I sowed indoors, but putting them in my mini-greenhouse when I've run out of room on the windowsills. Then when I run out of room in the mini greenhouse, I move things out of there that have been in there longest and look happiest/least likely to be nibbled by slugs.

Next to go out are the lettuces. I'm going to do an experiment to see if Hugh's coffee thing works!

I never really understood how I'm supposed to harden-off a greenhouse full of plants using a small coldframe, I suppose it was easier in Victorian times when people had acres of glass, anyway I've never had any problems.
BTW, did I dream it or was I reading recently about the Japanese method of hardening-off involving brushing seedlings with a feather, something to do with toughening them up by wafting them backwards & forwards :-\

The feather? Read back a bit about just that - fans etc.

Hardening off? Obviously, it's common sense? If a tender plant has been raised at 75- 80F, it would surely be counter-productive to put it straight out into, possibly, freezing nights??

Hmm, surely should but I can not recall having a problem, even when I was working in the trade