Thanks for the reply.
Re what you are saying there, are you putting them into the ground itself?
I'm putting them into a grow bag and not only that but a halo sitting above the grow bag, so I wonder if that makes a difference?
e.g. Here was the set up on May 7th, last year:-
View attachment 108289
So they were in there, a bit off the actual ground, with the house zipped closed at night for the first few weeks.
I've managed to hold off for now but I think I'm going to have to shift some of them out soon as they're getting too big on the window sill...
For me, they go from being seeded indoors, they spend a few weeks in the first containers till I see the first permanent leaves, then I transplant them to greenhouse flats. They get put outside in an enclosed screen porch that remains covered in plastic until May or so. They get brought inside overnight to prevent issues from the cool nights or frost.
I generally start my seeds about mid March, about a week before the first day of spring, The seeds are generally sprouting within a week.
Once transplanted into the flats they get separated by size too. Those that sprouted later go in a separate flat to be planted in stages come time.
My youngest plants right now are about 4 inches tall.
They will go into the garden last.
Between now and when the plants or when the weather allows me to plant they will slowly get moved outdoors in the sun for longer periods each day being brought back into the porch every night that the temps drop below 50°F or so. In two weeks the older plants will have reached about 12 inches tall and I'll start prepping the garden for planting.
I have more plants this year than last but far from the most I ever planted.
More seeds were successful this year than usual and I've got more than double the number of viable plants. Not every plant will survive to maturity once planted, but most will. I lost a few last year to groundhogs but made smaller mesh wire cages to protect them this year.
I also plant several test plants in a raised garden each year, so a half dozen plants will go in there as well. Its where I test any new ideas or plants I've not grown before.
I planted earlier a couple of times having plants in the ground by May 1 but they didn't do much growing for a good month afterwards and I spent too many nights covering up plants when frost was likely.
There's also the matter of wind damage, this time of the year we get a lot of wind, seeing 50mph gusts and rain is common and the wind has been getting worse lately. Back in 2012 we had a huge storm the last day of May and nearly every plant got ripped out of the ground, stakes and cages got toppled and debris from nearby yards and trees was strewn all over the garden. I lost 1/3 of my tomato plants. Luckily I had planted 50 that year. The wind ripped all my squash plants out, debris fell on and broke off all the pepper plants and stripped all the leaves off two row of beans. They called it a derecho. Since then I double up on what I plant and always have a second set of plants that are a few weeks behind the first.
That way if a storm, frost, or critters damage something that space has a standby ready to go in its place. Once everything is established, hopefully but the end of June, any extra plants either get given away, put in large pots up by the house, or planted around the yard in other garden areas. I even dug up and made a smaller garden by my side door one year to put four extra tomato plants in. It did okay but didn't get my full attention and being close to the house it lacked sun part of the day. It still gave me a few extra bushels of tomatoes that year though.
