On 21/3/07 19:00, in article
, "Rod"
wrote:

On 21 Mar, 18:02, "Dave Hill" wrote:
It has always struck me as strange that some young plants can take
frost, snow etc when only just emerged from the ground, whilst when
they are mature the first frost will kill them,
I am thinking of plants like sweet peas.

David Hill
Abacus Nurseries

This is something I noticed many years ago. Now I'm retired and back
to being an amateur gardener with no greenhouse I'm experimenting a
lot this year with rapid hardening off of barely germinated seedlings
and so far it's working quite well with January sown cabbages & caulis
and Sweet peas (the sweet peas and broad beans would have been done in
autumn if I'd had the plot at that time; Feb sown peas, lettuce,
spring onions, broad beans etc. This observation of David's is the
reason why autumn sown broad beans are better sown in November than in
September or October The new head gardener here is scaling down the
vegetable production so I've 'inherited' for my own use one of the veg
plots I used to cultivate at work, now to all intents and purposes I'm
an amateur allotmenteer, which is where I came in some fifty years
ago ;-)

Interesting, Rod, or frustrating or a bit of both, I wonder? Hope all goes
well.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)