Thank you slugworth for the replies. My thinking is evolving. It is possible that my hardening off failures are related as much to leaving them on my shaded back stoop when it is too cold than just too much sun. Some of both, but when hardening off, if they have not been under LED lights and you put them out for just a couple of hours, they still need more light than that, right? I've been reluctant to bring them in to a place where they have little light, and I've just found it too much work to get them back under the lights. If I made some modifications to my seedling stand, that would be easier. Of course significant modifications themselves would not be easy.
I doubt if I will be shifting my other 8 two-bulb 4' shop lights to LED right away. I think I have a box of a dozen light bulbs for them that haven't been used yet too. i was planning to switch one at a time when the ballasts give out.
I do push early planting some, but haven't gotten ripe tomatoes in June since 2012. The so called frost free date here is May 10. I start planting tomatoes when the weather forecast is for lows of 45 or above through May 10, so that would be late April to early May. [This year, 2020, the forecast was wrong and I had a lot of tomato plants frozen to the ground.] I plant on raised beds, which are warmer than just a flat garden.
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