Thursday 1 September 2011

Tomatoes and Frost Don't Really Mix...

These are the first of our tomatoes to ripen this year.  Black Cherry and Taxi Yellow beat all the others!  With harvesting the first tomatoes always comes frost, and boy was I ever grateful that I decided to cover my plants last night just in case.  While out yesterday, we bought a thermometer for the garden to better monitor the temperature out there.  Such prudent forethought because....

This was our view this morning from the kitchen window... misty fog and light frost on the grass.... I ran horrified out to the garden at 6am in my pajamas to find...

 frost on the prunings that lay scattered on the grass...

and the new thermometer measuring exactly what I don't want to see just yet! 


 This is what I hastily covered my hot bed tomatoes with - old drop cloths from the garage.  I had a large sheet of poly from our renovation that we have been using for many purposes which fit the main garden planting quite well.


I have been severely pruning back all my tomato plants this week in order to divert all the plant energy into the fruit.  Each plant is heavy with tomatoes but none are really ready to pick just yet.  Now we begin the daily dance of covering and uncovering, to try and squeeze another week or two out of the plants...


*Sigh* 




4 comments:

  1. Oh, I'm sorry. Hopefully things will be ok. I could say something about global warming but I will hold my tongue! I'll just say that here in DE, we've been having our coldest winters in 100 years! love,andrea

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  2. Frost? Already? We are still getting highs in the 100's! If it only hit 32', hopefully the covers protected the tomatoes.

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  3. Yup! I told you our summers are short!!!!! :) The tomatoes were fine today (no damage). We uncovered them as soon as the sun was shining on the garden this morning and then my daughter and I covered the plants back up again this evening. Cold night expected again... daytime temps are currently around 18-20 degrees C.

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  4. hi
    brrr !!! i'm sorry for you but I hope the weather
    will better soon. The night they also cold here in germany,but the days are warm and sunny.I send you sunshine!!!!!!
    have a wonderful weekend,
    love regina
    reginassimplelife.blogspot.com

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