Kinda depends on the tomato you are growing and how hot the nights are at the end of May. An 80 day tomato is going to take into the heat to set. If the days go over 85 and the nights over 70, you can forget setting tomatoes. If you're not growing alot of tomatoes, you can do both. Put some in the ground and some in gallon pots and be prepared. You can probably sell the gallons if you don't need then.

Now over here Dallas way, I don't remember these last 20 years that we had all that many freezes in April. Maybe a frost or two but those are no big deal most of the time. We have so much wind in the spring that I've taken to protecting the plants anyway so most of the time it's not much work to button up the plants at night if I have to.

At some point you just have to commit to try a couple of methods and work from there. Unlike most things, you can't really do the same thing all the time and expect the same results.

And about this Easter thing.......Easter moves. Use the equinoxes and solstices as reference points. And get a soil thermometer and use it. Leave it in the ground in the spring and let it tell you when the plant roots will be happy.

Just my 2 cents worth.

I'm on the western edge of Central Texas, south of Abilene. I have plants ready but I don't dare put them out yet. We had snow on Good Friday a year or two ago. Last year we had a frost that caught a lot of folks off guard and they lost their plants; I covered all my plants.

This week our forecast is for 30's at night for several nights...here they may say 37 and then the next morning I discover it got down to 30, a week or so ago the forecast was for upper 20's and it was in teen's.

I will be putting my plants out after Easter.

Peggy

planting early to beat the Texas heat , but we always seem to frost or freeze around Easter every year

I think some of the confusion on this issue comes from assuming that you can't do both, that it is a black or white issue with no gray in between. Not true. The big gray area is your soil temps.

IF your soil temps 6" down are warm enough for planting, either naturally or because of black mulch, say 60-65 degrees you can plant. And that plant gets the benefit of all that extra growth time and is now that much closer to setting fruit, hopefully before the high air heat arrives to prevent fruit set.

Now if a late frost comes along, it drops the air temp sure and the foliage has to be protected, but just for that night or 2. But the frost does NOT drop the soil temp and the roots are fine and the next day you uncover the plant and it just keeps right on trucking along heading for earlier fruit set. A heavy snow and melt WILL drop the soil temps but a frost won't.

Needless to say I am not claiming you can plant out 2 months early or when you know long runs hard freezing temps or snow are predicted. But soil temps are much slower to respond to changes in air temps than many realize and that soil temp plus a little cover/protection now and then will allow you some room to play with when it comes to trying to beat the no-fruit-set-heat problems.

Hope this is of help.

Dave

OK- THANKS TO ALL !!!!!! I believe I will watch to 10 day forcasts , find a soil thermometer??? and save some backup plants in larger containers.Again , I appreciate all the info.
CDGTXS

Hello again , I finally got time to actually spend some time studying the responses more carefully and have a couple more questions.First, west texas peg, do you make a good crop waiting till Easter to set out your plants??? Second , digdirt, you state:"And that plant gets the benefit of all that extra growth time and is now that much closer to setting fruit, hopefully before the high air heat arrives to prevent fruit set" This is sort of what was confusing me to start with. It was seeming to me that the plants in a larger container(Say half gallon or gallon)would be growing the same as one in the soil.That was really what I didn't understand when I first posted this question. Hope I'm making sense.
Thanks again
CDGTXS

It was seeming to me that the plants in a larger container(Say half gallon or gallon)would be growing the same as one in the soil. Nope, doesn't work that way, sorry. Problem is transplant shock.

Comments made earlier were directed at standard, normal sized transplants and their planting process. In my experience, they will easily tolerate the less-than-ideal conditions that the older/larger plants won't tolerate. We have to do beat-the-heat planting here too. ;)

First, why would a transplant be in a gallon or 1/2 gallon container rather than already in the ground? Was it started way to early? A normal tomato transplant wouldn't need a container anyway near that big? And a plant that is big enough to need that size container would have problems being transplanted period.

That's why we so often discuss here that the ideal transplant size is 6-8". Think of it this way - kids adapt faster and better to change, to new situations, than adults do and the same is true for plants. ;)

But, suppose for purposes of discussion, say that you have tomato plant in a gallon container. When you transplant it to the garden or its final container, any plant is set back a bit - it sits, re-adjusts, pouts, sort of settles in to the new location. Older/larger plants pout longer.

Depending on several factors, including the size of the plant, that can take anywhere from 24 hours to 2 weeks. The larger/older the plant, the longer the re-adjustment period lasts and all that time is lost growth-toward-production time.

So no, I sure wouldn't put a large plant that is going to have adjustment problems anyway into anything less than ideal growing conditions.

If your goal is to get plants into the garden and well on the way to production before the summer heat sets in to prevent fruit set, then as said above, once the soil is warm enough plant some normal size transplants that will settle in quickly and get about their business. Give them some protection if a freak freeze comes along and they will serve you well.

But if you have extral large/older transplants to deal with, don't give them even more stress to deal with by transplanting them into anything less that ideal weather conditions.

Hope this helps.

Dave