Young vs Old Plants

With no giant tomato contest this year, my gardening interests have turned elsewhere. I'm trying to answer the question of when is the best time to start your tomatoes and peppers indoors. Or perhaps worded differently, does it make sense to start your plants super early?

This year, I started a bunch of plants the day before New Year's Eve. That's ridiculously early. For comparison, I started the same varieties again the second weekend in April. I'm going to grow them under the same conditions to see which does better. Will the old veterans teach the young punks a lesson, or will the young guns outshoot their elders?

Planting day. No question which are the grizzled veterans.

Here are a couple of Stump of the World tomatoes, my favorite variety. I potted up the older plant in early April, around the same time that I planted seeds for the young plant. The New Year's Eve plant went in and out of the garage every day until the weather was warm enough to leave it out. It is covered with greenies (I counted at least 10). But it looks like it is dying. The lower leaves are yellowing and falling off, and the remaining leaves are all curled and drooping. Even the new growth looks distressed. I wonder if there's too much top growth for the roots to support? By contrast, the young plant looks happy as a clam. Will it ever catch up? Will the old plant die before it can produce an early crop?

Here are a couple of Rutgers Select tomatoes, an old-time variety with potentially heavy yields. One year a Rutgers Select produced over 200 tomatoes for me from a single vine. Wow. This old plant was a Charlie Brown Christmas tree vine if there ever was one. I didn't pot it up, but rather kept it in the basement until late May. It lost all of its lower leaves. At one point, I almost threw it in the trash. The vine was about 3' long and I buried the bottom 2' horizontally. Since planting it a couple weeks ago, it has done nothing. I can't see any signs of new growth. Meanwhile, the young seedling has thrived. I expect the young one to easily win this battle.

Here are some old vs young peppers. Not the same variety in this case, but you get the idea. I have young Jimmy Nardiellos going as well, I just didn't get any pictures of them. The old plants have yellow, curled leaves but lots of peppers. Even the new growth looks weak. By contrast, the young plants have almost caught up in size. No peppers, but really nice looking plants. By the end of the season, I predict the young plants will be outproducing the old plants.