October 12, 2017

Good morning,  in a "normal" year by the end of September I am restraining water to my tomatoes and maybe thinning the tops. This is done so as to hasten the ripening of the toms. This year has been anything but normal.

Back in July I thought once the rains came the growing conditions for tomatoes would improve. For what ever reason the plants grew but did not throw any blooms until mid September.

I feel this is late in the season to be ripening a whole crop of toms. If the rest of October and into November are warm They should size up nicely.

If the tomatoes on the plants turn glossy and are near full sized they should ripen in the house.

The game plan is to be ever watchful of the weather. I want the toms to stay on the plants  as long as I can let them. If there are light frosts, this should be easy to protect the plants with fabric. 

Just before the first killing freeze I will harvest them.

There are two schools of thought on how to store / ripen these toms.

One is to wrap them in newspaper and store in a box. To see if any have ripened one must unwrap all to check them. A lot of work!! then rewrap and store.

If you have the room, it is much easier to lay them  on newspaper in a cool room. It is very easy to glance at the little green orbs to see if any are changing. It is also easy to spot the ones that are rotting. There always are those that go from green to nasty. I  find it amazing that how  wonderful a home grown tomato tastes and how nasty a rotting tomato smells.

With patience there will be ripening tomatoes for a month or two.

With luck, next year will be a better tomato year. One thing I can count on is that it will not be like any year that preceded it. Good luck and happy gardening.

The zucchinis  have given up the ghost along with the cucumbers. The okra have all but finished. My last planting is throwing a few pods. The yellow squash  seem to be doing "better". At least they are not over run with powdery mildew and are throwing a few squash. I am amazed at the powdery mildew resistance of this squash especially with it also being a open pollinated variety too!!

As for the fall crops they are all doing nicely. My attempt at sprouting and planting parsnip seeds was no better than direct seeding of parsnips. Worth a try but not worth repeating.

Spinach and Asian greens are needing to be transplanted. Some caterpillars got into the beets, Bt should take care of them. 

This past "winter" there was really no sustained cold  so we did not have any weather thinning of bugs. We can only hope that this is not so this year! I frequently say if agriculture was easy every one would be doing it!