I'm glad you clarified that, because I thought the same thing Larry did, Susan, and I was horrified....thinking to myself "No, Susan, No." Now I am ROTFL because I knew that you knew better than to put a poor, unsuspecting plant in a Topsy-Turvy thing and I couldn't figure out what in the world was going on. Forgive me for thinking you'd lost your mind. : ) I'd move those plants back inside because you cannot count on a forecast to be that precise and if they are saying 40 degrees now, it could go lower. Last week our forecast low was for 36, and then the forecast dropped to 34, and our actual temperature was 28. This week, it was for 39, and then they dropped it to 37 yesterday and now it is 34....so maybe we'll see 28 again if the skies are clear. When they keep dropping the forecast low as the cold night approaches, it makes me nervous to the point that I cover up everything I possibly can within reason. Even 40 degrees is a temperature the plants won't like, even though it won't cause freeze damage. Remember, though, that frost can and does form at above-freezing temperatures up to 39 or even 40 degrees (a hard lesson I was slow to learn after we moved here because it never happened in Fort Worth) so don't take any chances with your plants. Dawn

I've tried many things over the years. Gloves(whether latex or nitrile offer "some" protection, but when you're processing superhots for hours, the capsaicin IS going to penetrate). I've tried butter, milk, oils, vinegar, soap...all with very limited cooling. But last year, I tried something different. I used to just deal with the limited "cooling," but the heat really wouldn't subside until overnight. I still don the nitrile gloves, but now I actually wash my hands with just plain white vinegar. BUT... I don't rinse or dry it off. Instant relief, but there's still "some" warmth. So, I'll do it again about 15 mins later. All pain/heat pretty much dissipates within an hour. My theory is that the capsaicin is not only on the surface of your skin, but has started to penetrate deeper layers. So, wash your hands with all the soap or oil you want...if you rinse it off, you haven't given it time to penetrate those other deeper layers. Kevin

This study is pretty conclusive that tasters could tell the difference even between pink picked and table ripe picked fruit. However, the room ripened tomatoes were held at 20C/68F, which was probably much cooler than the field ripened fruit so it doesn't tell me if the difference was because of attachment to the plant or not. I know that when my garden ripend fruit develop during cold weather the flavor is off. http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/datastorefiles/234-526.pdf Are pink picked fruit good enough to enjoy 100%? Yes Would some fruit picked table ripe off the plants taste slightly better? Probably. Would they all? probably not. Is the difference enough to gamble on losing fruit and taking the extra effort to hunt through the plants looking for eating ripe fruit? Not for me. I don't pick at blush stage because I don't have room for all of the fruit to sit around. They stay crack resistant until pretty far into the pink stage, so everything close to being ripe gets picked every three days or so.

Tomato and pepper seedlings are more flexible than more mature plants. I routinely let my greenhouse go down to 35 degrees at night, BUT the next day, I make sure they go back up over 100 degrees in bright sunshine. Low night temp slows growth significantly. High temps the next day reverses this effect. The way to look at this is number of hours at temperature below 65 must be countered by the same number of hours at a comparable temperature above 65. So if my plants go down to 35, that is 30 degrees below 65, then the next day, I make sure they get the same number of hours at 95 degrees. This is really easy to do, just watch the weather daily and adjust the ventilation to set the temperature in the greenhouse as needed. Bright sunshine can bring my greenhouse to 120 degrees when the outside temperature is only 40 degrees. So the range of temperatures you can work with is from 35F to 120F. Don't go above or below this range for healthy seedlings. There is one warning however for capsicum chinense peppers. They are more sensitive to low temperatures than most of the other pepper species. I make a point to ensure C. Chinense don't go below 45 degrees. This is because the seedlings will stop growing and won't start again until they have about 2 weeks of temps above 75 degrees. Bell peppers and most cayenne/jalapeno types are not sensitive to cold in this way. As mentioned above, letting tomato plants get below 45 degrees for short periods of time can increase production. Dig around on the net and you can find some articles from the 1930's that document this effect.