A lot depends on how you plant them once they are about 6” + tall, if you want faster vigorous growth, strip off the lower limbs and transplant them in a horizontal shallow trench being careful to slightly bend the top above the soil line without breaking it off! This will give you a higher root to plant ratio and keeps all roots near the warmer surface soil. Once temps are hitting 70s you can mulch them to keep roots moist. Use Epsom salts, no miracle grow to give them more vigor and better taste. You will have fruit to pick by late August if planted this way in full day sun
Dennis
Kent, wa
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I’ve started doing this as well.
I’m north of Seatle, but the weather was so mild this spring that I just had to get a jump on things. I planted my first batch of tomatoes in mid April. They are doing OK, but the next bunch I planted 2 weeks later are doing a little better. Third run was planted a week and a half ago, batch 4 & 5 are not in the ground yet. Looking forward to a large crop of tomatoes this year. 
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This is the way! I will probably end up building a dedicated grow box at some point for tomatoes, but they are too far down my list of garden priorities at the moment, so I usually don’t plant until it’s warmer than this. Was 44°F in my yard this morning. Too cold for tomatoes still!
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Agree that’s a temperature likely to stunt them if unprotected. That’s why a grow box with cloche is preferred. By planting the slips in a shallow trench with very little plant foliage exposed to the air the warmer topsoil will help prevent stunting during cold nights and rainfalls. A growbox or greenhouse is essential here for good Tomato crop
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my starts will be stunted this year and there’s no budget to buy, I’m hoping the trench planting and some good fertilizing helps them some. I jumped the gun on everything this year it seems, my garden is about a full month behind last year’s bloom time and such.
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Some of my tomato seedlings mentioned in my previous post. Even the winter squash has started to bloom. My Okra’s are not growing all that much, understandably for lack of heat.
Each year I grow Big Dena in ghouse
from seeds started in January. Temps for last few months have averaged only 70F with range of 50-90F.
Most years I’m eating red tomatoes by June 1st…but not this year!
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So I guess to provide the closure and outcome of my unintentional experiment - if you live in a cold place, plant only the tomatoes meant for cold places (who could have predicted this, I know). Below are two photos from the tomatoes I planted in spring - one is a hardy kind, another is a regular tomato. Also on a similar note - bell peppers and various chili peppers shared the same fate. There goes my attempt at making sun-dried Korean chilis. Various other things, such as peas, summer squashes, sunflowers, Korean lettuce, onions were prolific though.
