Hi marial1214, I'm in your same zone in PA, mid-north Montgomery County. I set out my tomatoes about May 1-15. I do everything a little early, so I'm risking frost. Last year, a late frost hit on May 19th, so I had to build tent cities with Xmas lights around my tomatoes. They were fine, but it was a lot of work. I find it to be worth it to plant them early. I set out my sweet and hot peppers based on night time temperatures, usually around June 1st. They and sweet potatoes are the only plants that I don't put in the ground earlier than recommended. For seed starting, I do the following: Hot Peppers: January 15th (but I will be starting the Habaneros next week) Sweet Peppers: February 15 Tomatoes: March 1 I have a VERY good light set up and my tomatoes grow thick, bushy and quickly. For all my plants, I pot up several times. For the tomatoes, I dig a deep (~12") hole, so even if they do get big, a fair amount of the stem is underground (they will put out roots from that stem). I've been doing some odd additions at planting time for the tomatoes: (bottom of hole) wool, crab compost, shrimp shells, Root Zone beneficial microbes, crushed calcium carbonate. I then water with Root Shield beneficial microbes (2T per gallon). The microbes/shrimp/crab compost is to prevent Verticillium wilt, but oddly, it also helped with late blight last year. The calcium carbonate is to prevent blossom end rot. Hope some of this helps. I've attached a link to my seed starting setup (can't find the one I posted on this forum) Good luck! Bellatrix Here is a link that might be useful: Bellatrix - seed starting light setup

>Not for nothing, but have you tried Home Depot or Lowes? Many of them still sell plants supplied by local growers, especially when it comes to vegetable plants. Really? I'm in the Stuart area and I've never seen anything but Bonnie for veg the big box stores here.

Last year I wasn't sure how many plants to plant and I wanted to have a good variety, so I grew about 12 different varieties, 2 of each, for a total of 24 plants. It was just me and my wife, but I figured I wanted to try out a bunch of different varieties and figured on some possibly being duds, dying off, etc. Well, even with last year being terrible for tomato growing, I still had enough that we were eating tomatoes for lunch and dinner (hadn't found a breakfast tomato dish yet, heh), making salsa, bruschetta, and tomato sauce by the gallon, I gave 10 pound bags of tomatoes to my parents and in-laws, friends, people at work, etc... And even with all that, my kitchen counter, island, and back patio table were covered in tomatoes of varying degrees of ripeness. I didn't can any tomatoes since I frankly didn't expect what I got and was overwhelmed, and since I've never done canning, I was afraid to mess it up, heh. Those we didn't use, we gave away to friends and family. For the coming year, I want to can some, but additionally I was thinking of donating extras to local charities. That being said, I'm cutting back a little this year, from 24 plants to 18 total - I figure I'll spread them out a little more than I did originally (my garden got a little crowded towards the end of the season) and I also figured that if this season turns out to be any good at all, I should likely get even more tomatoes out of less plants. In my opinion, since you plan to can extensively, make sauces, etc., and you seem to have a short season potentially, I would still think that 50 would be enough - but being the person I am, I tend to think you should grow as many as you can comfortably. If you have extras that you can't can or use fresh, etc., I'd just give those to peopl who can use them. I am of the train of thought that I'd rather have my yard used for growing things I can eat rather than silly grass (and some weeds), heh.

Prairiemoon, thanks for your kind words! I actually didn't start my plants from seed this year, but I do hope to do so next year.. This year, I bought plants early, potted them up and grew them inside my "fake greenhouse"... later, I did the schlepping them in and out on nice days thing. This was my original plan -- THEN I discovered the planters you could wrap, but it was all sort of an afterthought. Anyway, even though the weather has been similar both years (and to be fair, we've had unusually warm/sunny weather for our region), it's astonishing the difference from last year. Last year, I just threw the plants out there in April - and didn't harvest cherries till almost August. So I agree, I must be doing something right - and I owe it all to this forum! And, to Tomatoville. Well, also to the guy with the cool planters :-) Next year, I would like to grow starts that are ready to go out between Mar 15 and April 1. Then I will put them out at the "correct" size (rather than huge like I did this year) and put them in WOWs and wraps. (I did figure out how to use the WOW inside my caged planters, despite what I wrote earlier on another thread.) Growing inside the WOW and wrap should simulate a greenhouse like my back porch did. I am hoping by doing this that I will have earlier earlies, and decent production from late season varieties, which I used to completely avoid. Re: Alaska Fish and Morbloom... I have used both in the past, but no longer prefer this brand. The original is 5-1-1 and is good for leafy plants, but not so much for flowering ones. The Morbloom is interesting. It is made with fish, but I believe the 0-10-10 is acheived by them adding synthetic salts, so it's not actually certified organic (although it has an organic component). Of course, that is also true of the TTF, as I mentioned above. Nothing really wrong with that, but it's good to keep in mind. (This is actually true of Earth Juice, Foxfarm, and a lot of others). I remember the smell of original formula Alaska being horrible (far worse than Neptune's), but I can't remember how the Morbloom compared. Sey, I think what you are doing to combine the two fertilizers is very reasonable. I will be interested to see if you notice an increase in the number of flowers soon, or if you see more than in past seasons. In case fish doesn't turn out to be your thing, I have also used a Miracle Gro bloom formula in the past that seemed to work well.