Chookie wrote:

You can start tomato seeds this month, but not in open ground; it's
too cold for them to grow properly. You'll have to plant them up in
punnets and cosset them for a couple of months.

Last time I tried early tomatoes (to avoid the post-Christmas fruit
fly problem), the later-planted seedlings overtook the earlier ones.
This year I'm going to plant some cherry tomatoes early as well as
the bigger types.

I used to be an avid tomato grower (in canberra that's always an adventure).
Up here on this hill though the wind and stuff upsets them (and I'm gone in
late spring anyway). If i'm here for a summer, I'd be back into it though,
it's a lot of fun.

What I used to do, to get them going while the ground was too cold, was to
plant them up in pots you could put in the ground. Was those peat-pots, and
I believe now there's some more teckernological ones with holes. so I'd get
them going, feed them up with nitrogen to get them big and leafy, then soak
them in water and plant them when the soil was warm enough, water the crap
out of them until they seemed happy, and then start with the potassium to
get the flowers going.

--
ant