hey al .. ignore the idiots ... life is too short to be irritated by them... you said: So what part of Zone 5 are you in that you can plant early May? i said to start them about 4 weeks prior to last frost ... i see my sentence was rather vague .. lol ... but let me clarify further ... they need to be about 4 to 6 weeks old when they go out .... so to that you should add how long they take to germinate .... and i dont have that info off hand .... as noted.. its on the pack.. lol ... i am in adrian MI ... just south of ann arbor ... and out here in the country.. last frost date is reliably the last week of may ... and since the 'rent anniversary is 5/25 .... i can say that we have used that date as our plant out date for the 40 years i have been paying attention .... mx is in metro Detroit .. and z6 [ i have a theory about retained heat by cement causing the increased zone] .. i really question her comment that she is frost free around 5/1 ... take that with a grain of salt .. as i can see her out there building little TP's on a cold-forecasted night .. she is totally a full contact gardener ... petal to the metal ... she will get away with a few things that some of us who are not as full contact ..... only you will define were you are in that spectrum .... in my world.. i plant them out ... when i dont have to worry about them ... otherwise i leave them in the closed garage at night .. last year all the neighbors were bemoaning a late poor crop of tom's .... and we decided a late cold spell retarded proper flowering and fruit set .... after a very warm .. hot april ... may was back to march temps .... tom's are all about soil warmth.. and last year.. it was out of phase ... but in the case of tomatoes ... they are VERY.. VERY susceptible to frost ... so i would hesitate ... after investing all that effort to grow them... to not be sticking them out too early ... good luck ken

Start tomatos from seed 6 weeks before your plant out date. Starting earlier will result in tall, usually leggy plants. Your goal should be to have a plant around 6" tall and sturdy at plant out time. Starting them in a windowsill is unlikely to be enough light for them. A cheap fluorescent shop light hung 6" over the top of them would be much better, but still won't be enough light if they grow much more than 6" tall. In the event you do end up with tall, leggy plants you can bury the stem without harm to the plant. It's called trenching and you just lay the plant on it's side in the trench and cover all but the top 2-3 inches. The plant will grow upward by itself so no need to bend it upward, just keep the leaves off the ground so rot doesn't set in (just put something like a small sheet of plastic under it). Pot size with tomatos is flexible. I start out with a normal seed tray (6 pack) and transplant into 20oz plastic cups with holes punched in the bottom once the plants are a few-several inches tall. That's all I do until they get planted outside. You can use the 4x4 pot as well, but tomatos are a plant that benefits from having it's stem buried which is why I use the deep cups. They form roots along the buried stem. You can help the process by clipping off any leaves that would otherwise be buried.

I don't know if this will be of any help, but it works for me. I'm Zone 7/8ish and this is the way I do it. Tomorrow I'm going to sprout my Tomato seeds on moist paper towel, inside a margerine container in a warm spot. The seed usually sprouts in 5 to 6 days, sometimes sooner. I then prick them out gently and plant in 21/2" pots. They stay on the kitchen windowsill until they get 3 sets of true leaves and then they go into 4" pots. At this time I take them out to the greenhouse, (minimal heat in my greenhouse). They stay in the 4"er's until the roots fill the pots. I then repot into scotch pots, the tomatoes stay in these until they are planted out. I grow my tomatoes in a raised bed planter that is cut into a bit of a slope, the top of the front of the planter is waist high, the back ground level. The soil warms up very early. This planter also has a fibreglass roof over it, we have to deal with tomato blight up here and the roof keeps the foliage dry. Because the soil is warm I can plant my Tomatoes out May 1st. I dig a generous hole throw in a handful of Dolamite Lime,and scratch it around. The tomatoes are unpotted, I remove some of the lower leaves, lay them on their sides and bury them so that just the very tops are sticking out. I put hot caps over the plants for a couple of weeks. I don't fertilize till after the caps come off. The tomato plants usually have flowers when I plant them out, Most years we have Tomatoes in July. Celebrity, is the Tomato I grow, they don't need much staking. Boy can I ramble on:-). A......

MaryMcP, you make important points. Soil temp can be a killer, especially in hot climates, because in hot climates. our tomato growing season is short. By late June, I'm all done for the summer. I chuckle when I hear northerners taking pride in getting their first tomato by the Fourth of July. Getting tomatoes in the ground outside for us is a race against the eventual heat. That said, the Syngenta tool says that the average soil temp in Phoenix on March 1 is 60F. Pretty much like for me. So some years are harder than others. As to why folks don't start new threads, and instead glom onto archaic ones, should we suspect it's shyness? Now, I answered that original thread because I didn't notice that it was old. Is this your question, or someone else's question? Some resurrected threads here are old enough that the people that started them are probably well composted.