Slow growing garden

This year I decided to plant some seeds, buy a few small plants, and try my hand at fire escape gardening. We're now halfway into June, and how are my plants? Small. Spindly. Nonstarters. Yes, we've had a very cool and wet spring, and by now we should be into the thoroughly disgusting days of summer (read 85-95 degrees with 80-90% humidity, but no rain at all). Don't get me wrong. I LOVE spring, and cool days, and rain, so you would think I'm loving this weather, right? Wrong. I want my plants to GROW! I have planted so many seeds that have come to nothing. The seeds that have grown are still tiny little seedlings that probably shouldn't be outside in this cool weather.

So, I've been doing the dance of putting all the pots on the fire escape, then pulling them all in when I hear it's going to be cold and rainy. But then I forget to put them back outside.

I even brought my tomato plant inside for this week since it was still rainy and cool, and my plant seemed to be suffering.

Another problem is that the fire escape just doesn't get enough light. How am I supposed to know how much sun that spot gets? My mom said to watch that spot during a day I am home and see how many hours of light it gets. But what kind of light? This is all very confusing. 'Full sun' means what exactly? I had great light in the spring, until the tree leaves filled in. Now it's hard to tell how much sun is getting through.

Last Wednesday I bought 6 basil plants and 4 kale plants. Today I put them outside but they are still in the little plastic thing they came in. I'm worried they'll dry out today before i can put them in the planter, but they were suffering inside.