The little package Food Grower sent me said they were tomato seeds.
They LOOKED like tomato seeds.
The PLANTS look like tomato plants..
But I am growing PEAS!!!
LOL!
This is what I get for planting them so dang late.
Most people have already been picking ripe tomatoes out of their back yards around here for a while now.
I was about a month late getting them in the ground but I had frost on my windshield on June 13th of this year and I didn’t want to take any chances.
Now it’s going to be a race against the First Frost at this point.
I do have to say this though, those tomato seeds are AWESOME!
At least a 90% germination rate and once they started growing they just TOOK OFF!
I’m hoping the tiny little things can do some serious growing here in a very short while.
I figure we MIGHT, still have another month of decent weather.
September is usually the nicest month of the year around here and once in a while it will stay that way clear through October too. I’m not holding my breath for that this year. The weather has just been wonky as hell around here for the past 3 years.
not to fret
Globul Warming will keep the frost at bay and you’ll be getting ‘mators till November
farmers almanac don’t know nothing
Easy peasy to extend your growing season. Go to a fence company and see if they have a partial row of fencing wire. Not chain link but what we call range wire or welded wire. Measure from one side of that raised bed to the opposite, with enough to bow over the plants, like about 6 feet up. Stake the wire on one side and bow over the plants to the other, staking it. Then from a garden supply store if one is close by see if they have the light cloth ground cover, white in color. Pull it over the wire frame and use clothes pins or better those paper clips that clamp to hold up the sides. If a freeze is possible just fold down the sides to cover the plants under. It will keep frost off the plants and keep the inside warmer than outside the cover. should hold until a severe freeze but even run a trouble light out and it might keep the inside warm enough to prevent freeze damage.
Above should have said “roll” now row. Sometimes you can get a really good price for a small left over roll and they even might even just give it to you. This kind of looks like a old covered wagon from westerns. They roll up the sides on hot days.
My friends and I out east (go 500 miles due north from NYC, hang a left and drive 75 miles west) have yet to harvest any tomatoes. The ground has been too cold for the plants. Soil temperature has a greater effect on plant growth than air temperature.
A bit of stray limbs and some thrift store castoff sheeting will allow you to carry on well past the first few frosts.
There are dirt farmers that plant and hope for rain and there are Kulaks that store rainwater and old thrift store sheets to get a real harvest.
BTW dirt farmers generally use up their soil and WONDER why they are suffering from massive bugs on their near starved plants and little harvest.
Don’t be a dirt farmer like most that have a “survival seed garden in a can” folks.
This is why a lot of folks start their tomato plants inside in pots a month before it stops freezing, then harden them off and transplant them afterwards. If I didn’t do that, I didn’t get any tomatoes.
save your old coffee grounds and put them around the base of the plants.
also if you can get some horse manure, put some in a barrel and add water to it
let is brew a few days and then pour some NEAR your plants. not on them as it might burn them. older stuff is best to use. at least that is what I have found.
back in philly, I had tomato plants that where close to 7 feet tall and loaded with
fruit as well. had a rain water setup and one barrel was half full of horse manure
for watering the garden once a week.
come the end of growing season, chop up your plants and turn them over in the soil. your earthworms will thank you for it. I used to put the old coffee grounds on top and turn them in as well.
my carrots where going great until my dog found them. he dug up everyone of them and chowed down right there. he loved raw carrots.
don’t give up yet. there still time for them to get bigger.
Many plants LOVE used coffee grounds.
I had 3 pathetic looking blueberry sticks with roots given to me one cold, misty November day several years ago. Didn’t think they would survive the winter. They did.
The next year when I put used coffee grounds around them, they grew like a bat out of hell.
I have so many runners now it’s pathetic. I still have gallons of blueberries stashed back after getting over 4 gallons of them this year alone.
I did that years ago with my dad’s blueberry bushes and then he complained he was inundated with blueberries! Damn if you don’t, double damn if you do…
here a thought, have you thought about composting all the leaves you rake up every year ? I found using a bag mower on them and dumping the bag into the garden beds to ass compost to them. I put some old steel mesh over it and let it rot down into the soil. it works. was doing the same on the front yard with hopes of growing some grass in the future, but the downpours tend to wash it all downhill
which sucks. maybe some day.
I have 4 quarts of tomato gravy in the freezer and will have enough ripe tomatoes in a day or two to put 4 or 5 quarts of tomato sauce in the freezer. I only have 2 plants, an Early Girl Roma and a Better Boy. I am picking about 10 Roma and 3 or 4 BB’s a week since mid June. They should produce until first frost in late October.
Been too hot here for the tomatos. Had a bird take out a Beefsteak and a German Queen tomato and only have one GQ and 2 Beefs left.
I’m starting a few more seeds for a fall plant and one or two to attempt to grow inside over the winter…we’ll see how that goes.
I planted late as well but comments I have seen are about the above average heat during this La Nina/El Nino year. Funny I have heard no mention of it. 11 years ago, the average life cycle of it was the worst drought I had ever seen in my home state and others.
A lot of the heirloom tomatoes don’t like high heat…liking temps between 70 and 80 degrees max. They don’t have the built in heat tolerance that the GMO frankenfruit have.
We had weeks of temps between 100 and 115 not including the heat index from the ass chapping humidity.
My cantaloupe came in gangbusters again this year. Okra and squash doing okay. Yep to many 100+ days but no new record yet.