Depending on how cold it gets where you are, I think that you would need some artificial heat of some sort for those cold nights. I have had great success for several years now with what I call a Hotbed / Cold frame, which is a very old concept developed way back before people had electricity, natural gas and other of today's modern conveniences. I dug a pit in the ground about 3 feet deep, made a with a hinged double paned window. This is angled to catch maximum sunlight during the day and the part above ground has dirt piled up around it to insulate it. I put green horse manure, shredded oak leaves, some fine alfalfa hay and any other compostable materials that I have on hand and top it off with a layer of shredded leaves which caps off any odors etc. and leaves a nice surfact to work on to attend the plants, what little there is to do with them, . I can start by sowing them thick in the starting mix and separating them when I go to transplant of put up to larger 16 OZ. styrofoam cups. I think that it may not get as cold here as it does where you live, but this set up has carried my little seedlings though several "cold spells" with a little sleet, snow and ice on the ground and temperatures down into the low 20s or upper teens at night for . I like the fact that I can open the top part way, or wide open depending on how the weather is on nice days and expose the plants to the natural environment. I do not have to do any hardening off that way and have never had any disease problems or damping off to deal with. Something as simple as a square or rectangle of hay bales, or bagged up leaves, covered with a frame and clear plastic would probably work well in all but very cold weather. That is when you might need some help from some source of heating like a light bulb, heat lanp or what ever. Good luck with it and let us know how it goes and what you learn. Bill P.

geeze,, you'll have me beat big time, hubs has his sony, i think he paid 13oo for it, tabor has his apple k12 let him borrow, and i have my no good hp that i messed up. i guess zack said it won't reboot because of the hardware problem, hubs and i are thinking its the hardrive, and i remember that ever since i let talla watch that dang high school musical over the summer once in it, the hard drive would just keep going and going, some how she didn't shut it down right when she left, and it was going when i came in, and it was hotter than heck. and here i thought it was because of avast and it eating my files. if that turnes out to be the problem hubs has a hp that is a different make, but the hard drive is still awesome but the problem with his was that the lcd screen just quite working, so we decided that when i buy my next one, it has to be something pretty indestructible, as i have this shocking ability and this if it can be ruined, medo can do it!! LOL my mom let me have a pc of hers ( laptop) and she told me, you can't ruin it, well somehow, i did ruin it, i was diong something, and all of a sudden tha dang thing went black and NEVER ran again!! i totally fried it, so hubs took it in, and the guy told hubs that all that pc is good for now is a paper weight, LOL think that's the end of my accidental destruction? ya, HEEE HEEEE LOL we got this nice tv, i was washing the screen, and danged if some spray didn't get into the speaker part, guess what? it never worked again. hubs was very mad!! then it was this really cool stereo my mom gave me, could go really louod!!! OHHHH MAN!! so i'd clean the house and turn it up!! well i was moving the living room around, and plugged some stuff in, and pfizzzz i blew a circuit, the guy said, gues what? its no good, this is too old of a model. dang!!! nope, it do't end there!!! i fried another tv, don't really recal how on that one, just really remember hubs saying what the h*** did ya do now?? so when i move stuff around he freaks!! now the breaking has passed onto my daughter, and hubs ruining things has passed onto tabor, LOL talla busts all my cups and dishes, except when i somehow, i think i twitched and droped the top of the broiler pan and 3 plates on the top of my feet, OUCH!!! i actually thought i broke my feet, but i didn't, they just bruised, that was the only time i broke anything in years. LOL and i haven't ruined anything since, excluding that dang hp!! Man!! yes, i'm long winded tonight, its been 2 hyper yelling kids all day!! **sigh** ~Medo

Brett: it sounds to me as if most of what you are doing is right. The only exception is that it sounds like you started too soon. My plants get to about 12 inches tall in six weeks. Some of the giant heirloom types can be growing almost an inch a day at that point. They get very floppy when they get that tall. Each year I force myself to start later than the previous year. Our last frost date is around April 30, but I don't put my plants into the garden until two weeks after that. I started my plants April 1, and they are already four inches tall. I'm nervous that I started too early once again. In spite of all the talk on GW about putting out plants earlier because of mild temps, our 10-day forecast calls for lows in the low 30s on most days. In your situation, I would transplant to larger, deeper pots and bury at least 3 inches of the stem. I would also increase the hours of light to 18 and add a small fan. I really think you need to wait until the soil temperatures are over 50 and night time lows are reliably above that before you start a week of hardening off.

I guess it depends on what one's used to Standard 8' ceilings here were a challenge to me in our new house, because it was the lowest ceiling heigh I ever had. I'm not from the US and other countries I lived in had a different standard that was higher ceiling(maybe due to metric system lol). Growing up in the older part of a very old big city-ceilings were even higher. But I loved the house a lot and was willing to work with whatever it had. And it had 8' ceiling everywhere but the entry(which by the way was altered by the previous owners to become higher) and the living room. 7 in the dining but during remodel we were able to raise them up a foot. My way of handling the thing was: a) a thought of crown moulding-previous owners put it in their master bath(tiny supermodest space really)-but I swear to you it looked at least a foor higher than the adjusting bedroom. this thought never became reality though because expenses grew and had to give up on some things. crown moldings were the first to go. lol b) skylights. previous owners had installed several and they drastically change perception of height and space..for the better. so we installed another one when we had our addition built. It also helped to break rectangularity of the room..we also didn't put a door between it and a master bath but left arch opening between them (the toilet got its own small room of course). Otherwise we'd be left with extremely boring room that's too long, too dark, and doesn't inspire any desire to stay there. Giving it more depth and light helped tremendously c) and very important as I agonized over it. Painting the celings the same color-or the color that would look like the same color(which was, in our case either 50% or 66% percent of the initial formula), as the walls. The lines blend, you don't have this feeling the ceiling is about to fall on you. I'm 5.4 so not tall at all..but I can be sensitive to spaces, and sometimes weirdly sensitive. Part of my physique. Lol. d) ditching some common rules. I did install central fixtures where it made sense, and pendants, and sconces..and it took attention away from the lower ceiling, because now you had something interesting to look at instead of calculating ceiling height I have table lamps and floor lamps too, so layers of lighting. I read so much about it all and was in that state of don't do this and don't do that..until I became very tired of it and just took from all this reading whatever I deemed helpful and disregarded everything else. Freedom! now your ceilings are lower, and your kitchen sounds challenging. Regarding kitchen-Kitchen forum is (justly so) considered the best in the matters of planning and advice on everything kitchen, so post your plan there and I believe you'll get many helpful thoughtful answers, regarding layout, workability, etcetera They are very sensitive to specific needs of specific person/family in a specific kitchen, and your plan with dimensions and if possible photos of the space will be very helpful to them to suggest things specific to your kitchen tailored to your needs/wants/budget etc. If you ask very general question it's great when you just want to have an interesting discussion. But if you're willing to get specific advice, and often very good one, I highly advise Kitchens forum. Just copy-paste your question there, and add even a basic rough plan with dimensions. And several pics to show different walls and how kitchen connects to other rooms in the house. I remember myself daring to ask on some site that had this option "Ask a designer" a general question "What do I do with low ceiling" and I got a very kind but very standard answer to paint everything white. It's okay, one can paint everything white of course; especially works well with high ceilings, architectural moldings, and in Paris lol), but didn't provide me with any insight. Sorry for the long post!