I hear you suze9. I live in The Great PNW. About 20 miles S from Seattle. Zone 7b I guess. Where is live is about 2 weeks behind Seattle weather wise. Normal Feb temps are 40-45, night time 35ish. The drop to 18 is somewhat unusual, even in Dec, Jan. It's been an unusual year, again. Snow in Feb is rare. March, almost unheard of. This year the ?last? snow was beginning of April. Today was 75. > Larger transplants can work well for some, for sure - > but at some point it is definitely possible to start > too soon, to the point that you don't get any benefit, > or are even set back because of it. I am trying to find that point. Expense versus effort versus results weighted. This is my third year running of 'starting way too early'. This year was the earliest yet. Last year I had my first ripe tom June 6th. That's a pretty major feat around here. 'Course the weather from June through July sucked, very cold, so the benefits were minimal. LOL. Plants were HUGE, 10-15'tall by end of season, tomato count, ENORMOUS. Ripe tomatoes, not so much. My starts are not normal put in a 1 gallon pot and let them grow starts. I continually 'repot' them into larger and larger containers. I bury the stem deeper each time. They are essentially pre-trenched plants. 1' of stem or more buried by planting time with vigorous root growth all along it. Lat year the tops are 2-3' tall. The plants suffer no delay/transplant shock when put into the ground from pots. Critical for the short season here. Growing an inch a day, to growing an inch a day right after transplant. This year, I am making cloches so my efforts are not lost to the AGAIN expected cold june/july. And by starting so soon, if things go wrong, I have time for Plan B and Plan C starts.

Yes, Planted it with moist soil and soil is moist whenever I check. The plant receives about 3 hours direct sunlight ( I did this so that during the summer all my plants wouldn't be scorched for 8+hours in Florida)

Thanks for reposting, GG. This is just plain interesting. Don't mean to be insensitive, but it's a real who/what-done-it. There seems to be real clues, e.g. only one of the same cultivar, apparently with the same growing and maintenance conditions and the location (namely only the front one and problem focused only on one side of that one). Not to completely exclude others, but I like Ken's suggestion. So are there dog's around? It could be a pee/hit and run. It's the most accessible plant. Are there dogs in the neighbourhood and could a dog get in? Sometimes in garden maintenance you suspect, but don't feel sure about the root cause of a problem. Presumably that's because there's often not one single dramatic cause but an interaction of causes. You can also never be sure that an individual plant didn't come with an inherent weakness/susceptability, Still, in this case, what is the likelihood that that single plant would be the front one. It does seem unfortunate, GG, that the affected plant is kind of the lead plant in an attractively planted formation. Still a gardener's life is not (always) a happy one! So interesting.

I am making a comment on this old thread because I am having problems with my account and it appears that Tamara might be following this question. I can't see My Houzz or my settings--only on an email notifying me of activity does it appear--and when I went there it wasn't accurate . My avatar was gone and none of my bookmarks were there. Also it said I was following a bunch of people I've never heard of! I've also been trying to resolve the issue of the ad in the upper left corner that interfere with seeing the name of the OP of a thread. Please HOUZZ, send help! I didn't even see anything about receiving messages so I'm not sure if that is enabled or not.