As a part of the crap shoot that is March in the garden, I have set out tomatoes and basil as early as the last few days of March. Even as optimistic as that might be, I realize that other heat lovers like peppers, eggplants and okra need to wait for at least a month. Sometimes, luck comes in on my side and a heat wave hits, settling the tomato plants in nicely – other years, I’ve wasted my time. In those years, rarely do the plants die, but they usually sit sullenly in the cold ground doing nothing and when the warmer days do come, they usually don’t respond right away, like one might imagine. Instead of an earlier crop, I actually end up with a delayed harvest. A smart person could hedge their bets and put in half now and the other half later at a more predictable time. I don’t have one of those around here, so I usually put all my tomatoes out as soon as I have the time. It’s a life lived under the maxim of “Sin boldly!