Hi all. I am brand new to this site and to gardening, so I hope you can help me with my rookie mistakes! Okay, first, I have ambitious plans for my first vegetable garden. I started tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and cauliflower indoors per seed pkt directions. They look weak and spindly, about 4" tall after 2 weeks, and they want to lay down. My cellar is unheated and I have no place to set up lights in the house, so all my seedlings have is indirect sunlight. Yesterday was beautiful, 50 degrees and sunny, so I took them outside for a couple hours. I thought they would stand up, but instead today it looks like I killed them. Anyone want to take me by the hand? There is still plenty of time to start another batch, we can't plant outside until Memorial Day. Thank you all!!!!

Ciao Arthur and welcome. Your cool-weather cauliflower and broccoli should be ok. I've never grown them myself, but trying this year for the first time with direct sowing as soon as the threat of frost is over. Here in Toronto, that's usually mid-May. If you can't get light on your nightshades (tomatoes n peppers), I'd buy those babies at a nursery when you're ready to put them into the garden. Garden-worthy size for tomatoes is roughly 8" - 1' and you want to bury those stems all the way up to the first true leaves. They'll make roots all along that stem and grow big n strong. The seed leaves (cotyledons) are skinny and smooth-sided so it's easy to tell them from the true leaves. In addition, by the time the plants are ready to go in the ground, the cotyledons are usually withered and sometimes have fallen off all on their own. If they're still there, don't pinch them off, just bury them. The experts say that giving a tomato plant an intentional owwie can invite foliar disease, just like an open owwie on our own skin invites infection.

Garden-worthy peppers are about the same size and since you're in Maine, you don't want them any smaller than that or you won't get a good harvest. My experience in zone 5 is that the more colourful bells like yellows and lilacs take longer to colour up than the hot varieties like serrano.

Just my 2c Cdn.

Buona fortuna,
Julianna

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Meg,

I wait until 2 weeks after the nights are consistently frost-free. You don't want temps much below 40F for transplants. Tomatoes need warmth in order to germinate so sowing seed outside would most likely be sluggish. I know that even with seed labelled for this year, my germination results vary from 4 days to 2 weeks and that's inside with bottom heat (heating pad). I'd start inside if I were you, even if it means you're putting babies outside to harden off when they've only got their 2nd pair of leaves. Anything smaller than that and they'll be way too tender, easily succumbing to windburn, sunscald, or even bugs.

Phone your cooperative extension service (or maybe agricultural extension service in the States, I can't remember). They should be able to help you with frost forecasts and grow-out times for your area.

Buona fortuna!
Julianna

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