Monday, September 27, 2010

Still Harvest(ing) Tomatoes Monday

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The cross over harvest of both warm and cool crops.

Some of my tomatoes have burst in the irregular fall rains but the plants are still pumping out fruit. I have only now started to see signs of tomato chickenpox though I am not which spotty disease they have.

First Frost Watch 2010

Cloudy skies and wet weather has kept the white death off the tender plants. So far the longterm forecast is calling for more of the same, but any day now, the skies could open and the cold could settle. Some factiods follow:

Average First Frost for Ottawa - often quoted - October 5th

Farmzone - Weather Network - claims that the records for today were -2C and 28C. Last year, we had a frost skimming minimum of 4C

Predictions are for a La Nina winter and to quote wiki "In Canada, La Niña will generally cause a cooler, snowier winter, such as the near record-breaking amounts of snow recorded in the La Niña winter of 2007/2008 in Eastern Canada" According to NAOO, it is not clear how strong it will be. Oh goody.

8 comments:

Dave @ HappyAcres said...

I'm never ready to see frost, inevitable as it may be. Your tomatoes are splitting from the rain while ours have dried up! Oh well, it's always something I guess.

Emily said...

I had a mix of summer and fall this week too.

Also I got the seeds in the mail today. Thank you so much!

mac said...

I love the cool and warm veggies, they are so pretty together.

We still have about 3 weeks from "average" frost date, I'm pulling my green tomatoes and make space for fall crops.

meemsnyc said...

Looks like a great harvest!

Lana said...

I'm still getting some tomatoes too - my plants started getting the chicken pox about a month ago. I tried picking off the infected leaves to keep it from spreading... but alas, they are covered again.

I'll have to rotate them into a new location next year.

Angela said...

Nice, kale and tomatoes. I have right now tomatoes on m,y counter and a bag of kale in the fridge, but instead of threatening frost I am worrying about fire weather:-)

thyme2garden said...

This is the first time I'm hearing about tomato chicken pox. Yet another thing to watch out for in the garden! Happy fall gardening. Some of the china choy seeds you sent are now producing almost edible-sized leaves. A bunch of them got gobbled up by cabbage worms. I need to grow all these greens under a row cover next time.

Daphne Gould said...

I think this week is the one that I get both tomatoes and lettuce together. I can only hope that my average frost isn't too early. At my old place it was the end of October (usually right at the end). But I lived toward the top of a hill. Then it might follow last year. Last year Boston's first frost was in November - very late. It would be amusing to have tomatoes still coming in November. Hey I can dream can't I?