Here is a tip a worker at our garden center told me one time when I bought some patio tomatoe plants.
Keep the plants in the original pots even if you are putting them in containers on the deck etc. Place the pot with plant in your container and then put dirt around the whole pot. Otherwise if you remove the plant and re-plant it there will be an adjustment period that the plant will have to go through. Sometimes it can 'stunt' it's growth for awhile and the vegtable will take longer to get ripe.
I did try that and it seemed to work very well. If I recall I was told to also crack the pot down the sides to allow for the roots to come out later if it needed more room to grow.
pk
