What has happened is the stress of taking them in and out - the radical changes in environment. Once hardening off begins, they need to stay in that environment. Otherwise they aren't being hardened off. That means you shouldn't start the process unless the weather forecast allows it to continue until they can go into the garden. Less experienced gardeners who try to rush planting out will hotly debate this - see recent discussions - but the validity of it is well established. In your case nights of 40-50's are no problem for them outside. The severe storm? Perhaps but rather than bring them end you just move them to a more sheltered environment for the duration of the storm. Back inside and under lights is too radical a change. Clearly there are exceptions, depending on the crop. A sudden snow fall or hard freeze for example. In which case bring them in but try to duplicate the outside environment as much as possible - cool basement with no lights, for example rather than the living room with lights. What many fail to understand about the process of hardening off is that full bright sun tolerance is not the primary goal. Adjusting them to air temp and avoiding high wind exposure is. Dappled sun, what many call part shade, as long as they are protected from harsh winds and air temps below 40's is great hardening off conditions for most vegetable plants. If you will move most of your tomato plants to such an environment they will recover assuming they are not rootbound in their containers. You may lose some of the worst leaves but the new growth will be fine. Hope this helps. Dave

For this year I've transferred Lois Hole's advice about seeding early if weather warrants it, to two of my tomato plants. I want 2 sunsugar in the garden, but kept 4 of my best seedlings. I planted 2 of those out, with protection in the form of a large clear garbage bag, on May 11th! That is my earliest day ever, one year I was as late as July 8th (cherokee purple - still got tomatoes before frost, they just had to ripen indoors). I'm covering with a blankie tonight with expected lows at +3, and if we should get a freeze and my sunsugars bite the dust, I'll have the two 'back-ups' to plant out in June, when I usually plant out. No frost, and hopefully I'll have some cherry tomatoes earlier and be ahead of the game. The year I planted the tomato out July 8th, I took no time to harden off, but used clothespins to secure an old bedsheet around the tomato cage for a couple of days, to get it to adapt to the sun. I would only have done that for a couple of days, I don't recall it appearing to have suffered from that. I'd bought it from a greenhouse for a buck so couldn't resist, and I had the room for one more in the garden.

Nandina- you may be on to something: House was built 03/2008. Pine bark Mulch beds surround this part of the house, initally planted with ligustrum, muhly grass, liriope and palms. No Gutters on roof, so water goes straight down house and percolates through mulch beds. I planted the tomatoes in this mulch bed about 4 feet from wall of house. This site gets light shade in the AM and full sun in PM. First time planting tomatoes in this area. Here's how the plants are doing: Ligustrum has sooty mold and are kind of leggy. Viburnum is vibrant. Holly is straggly. Oak is fine. Magnolia tree was chopped down due to fungus in core. Palms are fine. Lantana is fine. Cypress tree is fine. Pine trees are fine. Citrus trees are a battle - I planted them on west side of house which held a lot of water and they almost drowned to death. I moved them to a drier area and now they are fine. Peach tree has some sort of rust I am fighting with sulfur. Squash and Cucumber are failing to thrive and now have spray damage from oil spray. Green beans and sugar snap peas are great. Potatoes are fine. Radish is fine. Muhly grass is full. Liriope were straggly and weed prone so I pulled them all up. Lots size is about 75 X 150, so backyard is about 2700 sq. ft. I planted in this spot because I always try to keep tomatoes separate as they tend to get lots of bugs, etc. in FL and usually if I isolate them, they do much better. At this point I think I just messed up in planting them in an area that has a higher humidity point + mulch bed + close to house. I should have known better, really. I guess the question now becomes do I just leave the remaining 7 plants in the ground or pull them all up in order to control the disease spread?

The stalk borers don't usually attack fruit. it's really common for fruitworm or other caterpillars to get inside fruit, though. Fruitworm moths usually lay their eggs around the calyx,and the baby fruitworms bore in under protection there, and the larger holes you see elsewhere in the fruit that look like perfect holes are usually their exit holes. If you're seeing a lot of those, start spraying BT up under the sepals of developing fruit. Caterpillars that attack from the outside in vs from the inside out usually don't leave deep holes but leave damage to the outer wall of the fruit. Next time you cut off a branch that looks like it might have a borer in it, split it lengthwise to see whether there's debris inside consistent with frass. Or you may even come across the borer. You probably know this already, but the borers that affect tomatoes (and corn and other plants) are dull brown/gray moths. They're not the same species that attack squash plants.