Hi Leslie,
I'm in Spokane, and our weather has been unusually gorgeous. I'm waiting
for the other shoe to drop. We HAVE had snow the first week of May before.
There are many seeds that are perfectly safe to plant outdoors now - annuals
like poppies and bachelor buttons, cold hardy vegetables like lettuce,
collards, peas, etc. If you have tomato seedlings and the like, I think this
is too early to harden them off in our climate. (You might be warmer than we
are, but still only a few weeks ahead in terms of last frost date). The
problem is that, even if you are in the tri-cities or the like, tomatoes
really shouldn't go into the garden until maybe the week before Memorial
Day - they can be set back by the sort of cool showery spell we very often
get in spring, where the high temp might be only 45 for a week, and the low
38 or something. They usually won't be killed, but they will suffer and
grow very slowly the entire month of June.
Isn't it pleasant to see tulips, daffodils, magnolias and fruit trees
blooming this early - some years, the crocus are only just finishing up the
first week of April. I hope we don't get any more severe frosts this year -
all the farmers' fruit crops would be severely damaged.
"Leslie" wrote in message
...
This is the first year I've started seeds indoor and mostly they're doing
well. I would like to start hardening them off soon since the weather is
so
nice and looks like it will stay that way. Even though I'm in zone 5, it's
been getting down to only about 40 at night and in the day it's been
averaging a high of 68-75. This week is expected to get to 80. In another
thread someone said definitely don't start hardening off in zone 5 yet,
but
with these temperatures is there any reason not to? Maybe I'm just too
excited to get these little guys outside! :-)

TIA,
Leslie, zone 5 in the deserts of Eastern WA