Its nice to hear from so many of you and some of you who are not so far away ... I am in St Marys County , not far from you Sunnibel and Mootgirl ? Because of health reasons I didn't get to plant my kale and collards this past fall ... We made another raised bed friday, the soil is warmer than I expected so I was jonesing to plant some veggies yesterday, so I decided to go for it , I planted kale, collards, spinach, vitamin green, lettuce and watercress yesterday ... we covered it with a tarp just in case this rain we are getting today decides to get heavy and then we will uncover it tomorrow , supposed to be 50s all week , a little cold a few nights but hoping it will be okay ... I don't have the big garden spot ready yet but need to do it soon , I want to plant out some radishes and snap peas asap ... Thank you all for all the great advice ! Bring on Spring ! Iris

hi 1sst I just finished planting here in Baltimore County. I don't think you are too late in SC.

There are other season extension strategies but keep in mind that many of these later season indeterminate varieties start out with vigorous plant growth, some more than the early fruiting varieties. Simply starting them earlier inside may give you results that you can't deal with. One of the easiest practices to warm the soil and speed growth is to lay black plastic on the soil where you intend to plant a few days prior to intended planting date. Also, for many years I would just fit a clear garbage bag over the cylindrical tomato cages,seal along the ground with soil and cut a few slits in the top to let hot air out. A method somewhat like the Wall-o-Water idea is to invert the tomato cage, insert the bottom of a larger clear plastic bag onto the ground spikes of the inverted cage, then set it over a plant, double the bag to the ground and back to the top, dump ~5 gal. of water into the bag fold (holds it against the ground and also buffers temperature swings), and then loosely tie the bag opening on top again. You will need to watch these, usually opening the bag tops each mid-morning and closing late in each day. If you already have tomato cages the cost is about 25 cents for a clear 55 gal drum liner per plant. You could also setup a temporary Low tunnel or some makeshift support to allow you to protect your early transplanted plants on cool nights. For a few years I used windows, set over the plant row in "A"-frame style. With a 4'window pair I would stradle two tomato plants in a row, then skip two, continuing down the whole row. On cool nights I covered everything with a sheet of plastic. But what I noticed was that the plants under the glass grew faster and produced like clockwork two weeks earlier, even though the sides were open as the windows joined on top to form the "A"-frame. I'm relating all these as a progressive learning experience that led me to high tunnels, the technology that you don't want to experience. I'll just say that this is the first year that I didn't grow any tomatoes outside and I don't regret it. My tomato harvest season extends from early June til late November(some supplemental heat required). In zone 3 you might expect a month less at each end. Why not give it a try if you are serious about growing tomatoes?

"Oh ya, all the stores still have plenty here. Seedling purchase won't be issue. Was more curious if was better variety to go for, vs maybe ones that would take too long." If you are buying transplants rather than growing your own from seed then your choices will be severely limited anyway. Do you have a list of what is available? If so then you can look each up by name to see what its DTM is and look for one around 60-70 days, no longer. Otherwise we could list all sorts of varieties of the thousands that fall into that maturity range but the odds are very slim you could find them as a nursery transplant. Nurseries and the big box stores tend to limit themselves to 20-30 varieties only. Dave