Something ate my seedlings....is it too late to re-start?

Hi! I'm a newbie and this is my first attempt at starting tomatoes from seeds. I started them under lights and bottom watred them in cells the beginning of March. After the threat of frost was gone and they were germinated, I bumped them up into styrofoam cups until they got a little bigger. I sat them outside on a nursery table so they could get some good air circulation and sunshine. They were about 3-4" tall but kind of lanky. I was getting ready to bury them in the ground later in the week....but...

To my horror, something ate them! All I have left is stems! Of the 32 I had, I only have about 6 left (they apparently didn't like Mortgage Lifter! LOL)

I was wondering if it was too late to sow seeds in cells, cover the flats with screen and set them outside or am I too late to do anything about it this year? How would I go about it? Sun? Shade? Bottom water?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sorry I don't know South Carolina. But if it is a close call, try early varieties like cherry tomatoes. And maybe buy already-started seedlings or trade people for them.

I think the question is "how many warm growing days do you have left" and "how early are your varieties"? Or, if SC is like Texas, how many days do you have left before it gets so hot that tomatoes can't flower?

In coastal WA, summers are so cool that tomatoes don't grow very fast. Cherry tomatoes or small varieties tend to be early, early enough to ripen if they are started ASAP in the spring. Medium-size and large tomatoes take too many days and too much heat to ripen reliably here.

Where you live, do people complain about not being able to ripen late-season tomatoes? If so, it MIGHT be too late to start a second crop of an early variety from seed and still ripen them.

Or it MIGHT be early enough for you to buy some seedling plants of early-ripening varieties and still get ripe ones this summer.