Master Gardener: how to protect new plants from the cold

Q.  We’ve already started our tomato plants from seed and it looks like they’ll be ready to go into the garden in February, much earlier and potentially colder than we expected.  What kind of cold protection would you recommend for them?
A.   From the earliest years of our country, gardeners have worked to extend their growing season.  I like to get my tomato plants in early too and have tried many methods of plant protection.  Most of these methods rely