Hi Abby! Glad you stopped by : )

I'm a zone cooler than you, and this is only my second year to grow tomatoes from seed, but last year I did both, WS some, indoor sowed the rest. What I used to determine which ones to start indoors was the DTM. If the DTM was 85 days or more I sowed them indoors, if it was less I WS them.

Bonnie

highalttransplant,
I thought about doing that, but since many of my tom seeds came from trades (and there's NO info on most of them... rare seeds apparently) I have no way of knowing the DTM. I can safely assume that most IND beefsteaks have higher DTM so I'll keep those babies inside with me.
How readily do tom seeds rot when they've been winter sown? I'm a little concerned because of our weather as of late. It will get warm for a few days then a hard frost hits for multiple night in a row.
And what about other veggie seeds? What is safe to wintersow without a high likelihood of losing the seed to rot?

Thanks!
Abby

Abby, if you at least have a name, you can do a Google or Yahoo search to find out more info on them. Definitely the cherry or grape type tomatoes will ripen earlier.

As far as what other veggie seeds are safe to WS now, lettuce, spinach, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, radishes, carrots, and parsnips should all be fine.

Bonnie

Bonnie,
The root veggies you mentioned, should they be direct sown or started in paper pots? Things have a tendency to get trampled if direct sown.

I usually direct sow root veggies, but lots of folks WS them. I think as long as you transplant them early, you'll be fine. The issue with transplanting late is that it can cause the roots to grow crooked. They'd still taste the same : )

Bonnie