Planting tomatoes out

[OverWyreGrower]

I've got loads and loads of various tomato plants. They're mostly about 6inches high now and are coming on really well.

My question is, when can I take them out of their pots and plant them into the greenhouse soil?

Obviously, for any I'm putting outside, I'll be waiting until the end of May if possible, but would like to get some of the bigger plants into the ground.

Is there a set point to do it at, e.g. first flowers etc?

Cheers

OWG

[Alison]

There is quite a bit of advice that you shouldn't plant out toms until the first flower truss forms as it apparently helps with the fruiting or something. Personally I put them in when I want and have never had any problems as long as they are strong and healthy.

[Flummery]

I go with Alison on this. They go in my border when it suits me! One side is planted up now but the other only has 2 in because I still have spring onions and mooli there which aren't eaten up yet. The toms that will go in there have been potted on into about 5" pots. Some will stay in pots anyway and I prefer to pot them on in stages. Looking at my toms now, most but not all have a truss of buds on.

[Mrs Dobby]

With germinating some of our toms back in Feb we have reached a point where some of them have gotten soo large that we've had no choice but to plant them into their final positions! We planted out our first Toms into growbags in the walk in plastic greenhouse (in a sheltered back yard, so if it looks like a frost we can nip out and cover with fleece) about 4 weeks ago now, we've 12 plants in grow bags (now about 4' tall) and 3 in hanging baskets, all of which have both flowers and about half of which have fruit on, ranging from about 1/4" to just under 2"!

We also planted out into the greenhouse border on plot1 our first 8 toms, ranging from 18" to 3' tall, all of which have flowers on too! We also risked putting 3 outside in the sheltered spot behind the greenhouse too, and as yet all of them seem to be doing fine!

Obviously we'll be a bit nervous about the weather for the next few weeks, but if the weather stays good, then we'll hopefully get an early crop, and if we loose some, then we've plenty more seedlings to take their places!