If you asked me what my favorite time of year in the garden is, I would have to say April and

May. Besides being the most pleasant time of year in my area to garden, I just love looking at my

young plants so full of life and hope and expectation. It's so fun. But while there's a lot of attention paid to how to care for

indoor seed-started plants and even how to take care of your growing mature plants and harvesting

and canning and all that fun stuff, it seems like there's not a whole lot of talk about how to care for your

adolescent plants. You know, the ones that are in that awkward stage that haven't quite reached

maturity yet, but they're not babies anymore either, what kind of special care do you need to take

with them? So whether you have just transplanted plants into your garden, or if you are just seeing some seedlings emerge

from your direct sewn plants. In today's episode, I'm going to give you some guidelines for how to

take care of your plants in those awkward adolescent stages. Hi, I'm Jill and in 2013, I started my first garden, having no background, knowledge, or experience

whatsoever. Now I am embarking on my eighth season of growing my own vegetables, fruits, and herbs,

and I'm proof that you don't have to have decades of experience to grow your own garden, big or small.

I certainly don't know at all, but I can share

what I've learned and bring guests along who can offer much more wisdom than I have. I'm so glad

you're here at the Beginners Garden podcast today. Let's dive in. If you listened a couple of episodes

back, you know I talked about how to harden off your indoor sown seedlings and also how to get

ready to transplant your plants into the garden whether you've grown them indoors yourself or whether

you bought them from the garden center today we're going to pick up where we left off and we're going to

talk about what to do with your plants once they are actually in the garden. So you've got your

transplants hardened off, you got them planted in the garden, what now? The first thing I would tell

you is to mulch immediately. You're talking about transplants that are probably at least six

inches high. They're pretty well established.

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