Bravo! I hope you are able to harvest tomatoes from you plants real soon. I also had a tomato plant that grew on a windowsill over the winter. It was rooted from a sucker from one of the plants outside before they all developed late blight. I was able to harvest several tomatoes from the indoor plant before its demise. There were a bunch more growing too and tons of blossoms. If I had planted it in a larger pot, I bet it would have survived. As it was, I couldn't keep up with the watering since it was in such a small pot. Then it became infested with spider mites, so outside it went. I am going to try it again next year. Windowsill Tomatoes in the Winter - It CAN be done Rachel GrafixMuse's Garden Spot

Wow, Peggy, tomatoes starting to form on your plants. That is something. good for you! :) I am just starting to plant tomatoes. Three kinds so far-Mountain Princess, Kellogg's Breakfast and one with no name but it is from seeds that one of my customers gave me from a huge, red tomato that she said had been grown from seeds that one of her relatives had brought over from Portugal. I grew it last year and the plant and tomatoes were huge, but the groundhog ate or ruined almost all of them. The KB was planted on the twenty first and is just showing through the soil a little bit today. The other two were planted on the twenty second and so should sprout either tomorrow or over the weekend. I have a few more varieties that I want to grow this year, but will start them over the next couple of weeks. I also have planted several kinds of peppers-sweet apple, mini yellow and orange sun--hot cherry bomb, fish, cayenne, medusa and explosive embers--hmm not sure what others right now--too lazy to go and look :) I may grow a couple of other varieties but just haven't made up my mind for sure. anyway I also have night blooming jessamine, heliotrope, abutilon, ageratum, datura-triple yellow and lilac lafleur, three cannas (from seed) and a castor bean and four dahlias (from seed--checking germination on older seeds) along with those I am also potting up brug cuttings and coleus and plectranthus(mona lavender) cuttings. The majority of my planting has been wintersown. All the containers are outside waiting for some warm temps to get them started. :) cactusmcharris I like the pics of your unusual plants. I love unusual! :) Ross, you reminded me that I have my calla lily 'in storage' so will have to make sure it is potted up in time to go out to the garden. donka nice list! I have WS nicotiana, petunias, foxglove, larkspur, poppies(annual) and lupines along with lots of others and am still not done. so.......anyone else? :)

Tammy - first things first, lettuces, yes, you can grow them in a coldframe now. I have done this for years, no problem. As for tomatoes, I am trying them this year in a coldframe. I plan to start them indoors around feb 1, and then transplant them into the coldframe around Mar 15, much earlier than my recommended safe day of May 1 (note, I am just east of you in zone 7A (N. VA) so you may want to adjust your schedule accordingly. As for how the coldframe works, in daytime, its essentially a mini-greenhouse. As the sun streams in, I can achieve anywhere between 20-25 degrees over the outside temperature. This is fine now, but come late mar, early april as we sometimes reach 70+ degrees, the issue then is too much heat. In years past, I literally cooked my tender greens by neglecting to uncover them on warm days. Thus, as potterhead notes, its not a bad idea to get an automatic vent opener (it operates as temps cause a cylendar to expand and lift the lid). My bigger concern now is nightime temps as I dont want it to get too much below 50 degrees at night and potentially stunt production. In lieu of christmas lights, I am using an adjustable spotlight, facing the ground with a 150 watt bulb on a timer. I dont know if this will work, but thusfar, I am able to achieve about 10 degrees over the nighttime temps, possibly more. That said, the 150 watt light seems awfully hot - im almost afraid to use it for fear it will set some mulch on fire! Any event, these are my plans. But again as far as lettuce goes, go for it - just be sure to somehow vent it if necessary.

Well, bad news today, Amazon is sold out of the Opalkas.. I will call Laurel later today and see if she has any. What I would do is do a search for "Tomato Plants for Sale, Bay are, or your city or a big city nearby. Why do I suggest that? Well I did a search for Tomato Plants "Orange County Calif". I didn't turn up any nursery that had the kind of maters I wanted, so I found Laurel and ordered them all from her. I had a dentist appointment Tuesday, and on the way home, I stopped at a local Nursery, (about 10 miles from Home). They had every mater I wanted, and nice size and price too!, GRRRRRR. I did not find that nursery when I did my search because it was in LA County!!!!! With Me, I want "Instant Gratification" with my maters, and had I done a better search, they would be in my garden now!!! I'm 70 and don't have the patience, time, or wish to take the chance on something going wrong trying to plant seeds, caring for them, light heat, water, etc, transplanting them a couple times, hardening off etc etc, so I always buy live plants. Hope you find your maters! Gary