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Please share any comments or tomato tips you might have.

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From the lens My Tomatoes Were Hit by a late Frost in April.

Feel free to share anything that comes to mind from reading this.

  • Jun 1, 2011 @ 5:49 am | delete
    really helpful..
  • dellgirl May 28, 2011 @ 9:05 pm | delete
    Love this lens, it's very well done. I have a couple of tomato plants (wish I had gotten more) but, I'm just starting out and didn't want to over do it.
  • tssfacts Apr 8, 2011 @ 7:37 am | delete
    Great article. I learned everything about growing tomatoes from my Mom. She could grow anything. Even grew a tomato plant from a seed that was found on her tooth once.
  • WeddingZazzle Sep 14, 2010 @ 12:04 am | delete
    Sorry for your lose. Nice lens. Blessed by a SquidAngel :)
  • skiesgreen Jul 13, 2010 @ 10:40 pm | delete
    Tomatoes are the one thing I worry about the most. How early to plant and how long to leave covered. You are not alone in your experience. *-*Blessed*-* and featured on Sprinkled with Stardust
  • OhMe May 21, 2010 @ 12:44 pm | delete
    My mother in law said "Where There's Life, There's Hope" but I don't think she was ever referring to tomato plants. They were farmers so she may have. It is so interesting to read journals from my husband's grandmother. They sure made me realize the importance of the weather to farmers. Every page always started with a weather report. Sounds like you got some real good advice at the Farmers Market and hope you will soon be picking some sun warmed tomatoes from these plants.
  • ElizabethJeanAllen May 16, 2010 @ 7:58 am | delete
    I'm glad they recovered. I planted early this year and fretted everyday when the temperature dropped. We didn't get a frost but it was close. Some of my tomatoes are over three feet tall now and are starting to set tomatoes. My husband claims I fret over my tomatoes more than I fretted over the kids when they were small.
    I think he's right.
    Thanks for sharing.
    Lizzy
  • BarbRad May 16, 2010 @ 1:32 pm | delete
    Unfortunately, they never recovered enough to bear more than two pounds of fruit between the sixteen tomato plants. Next year I will spry them with Freeze Pruf if I have any doubts about the weather. (See ad in sidebar.) Bu I will still never plant before the last predicted frost date again.
  • windygig May 16, 2010 @ 12:01 am | delete
    great tips! just saw some dead tomatoes at my friend's tonight...looked just like yours.
  • BarbRad May 16, 2010 @ 1:28 pm | delete
    I feel for your friend. I hope they recover better than mine did and bear fruit.
  • bethd821 May 15, 2010 @ 7:17 am | delete
    I'm glad your tomatoes recovered. It is heart wrenching to go to the garden and find dead or damaged plants. Better luck this year. :D
  • Pukeko May 11, 2010 @ 3:56 pm | delete
    Interesting information on frost bitten tomatoes. Hope you have a great crop this year.
  • sandyspider May 11, 2010 @ 9:37 am | delete
    It is May and we have recently gone though frost advisories. It looks like some late planting. Good luck planting this year.
  • whitemoss Apr 23, 2010 @ 11:28 am | delete
    Hope it doesn't happen to you again this year!
  • BarbRad Apr 23, 2010 @ 12:31 pm | delete
    It won't. I haven't' even started preparing the raised beds yet this year. I wont' be planting anything until at least the second week in May.
  • Pastiche Apr 8, 2010 @ 8:26 am | delete
    In PA we must cover tender crops until mid-May, although we often have temps in the 80s during April. We lost our squash to bugs and our tomatoes to blight that blew in on the wind from plants a mile away at WalMart last summer. This year we hope there's no blight, and we're using row covers on the squash to keep the bugs away from our organic veggies. Love this lens ... 5*
  • BarbRad Oct 31, 2009 @ 4:49 am | in reply to LaraineRose | delete
    Thanks for your return visit. Do you get the plastic through catalogs or farm supply stores and use regular tomato cages? Or do you put the plastic on those big hop-like frames? About how many degrees warmer does the plastic make it?

    This year's crop has been very disappointing with the weather ups and downs. It froze last night and maybe it will freeze tonight before morning, but it' supposed to be 80 tomorrow.
  • LaraineRose Oct 31, 2009 @ 2:35 am | delete
    Saw your lenscast and decided to come back for a look at your row covers. I've never used them .. just use heavy plastic stuck up on the cages and weighed down with bricks. I had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year with a lot of green ones left to ripen in the house for eating now. I'm not bragging .. just the way it is some years. Good year or bad year. This just happened to be a good year.
  • BarbRad Oct 10, 2009 @ 2:26 am | delete
    This has just been a disappointing gardening year. Last Saturday I picked a few small tomatoes and left quite a few green ones on the plants in pots, which mostly were not the ones that had frozen. Now the nights are cold again. I've been sick all week and could not get out to water, but the paper said the low was 32 on Monday night. I hope to have enough energy to go out and see if there's anything left. I guess if the plants didn't freeze again, it's time to put row covers back on. If they did, I will give up
  • AppalachianCountry Aug 21, 2009 @ 8:38 am | delete
    Mr. Ralph was a blessing. Wonderful lens. We hope you have a bumper crop even with this last trial. 5 stars*****
  • LaraineRose Jul 29, 2009 @ 4:04 am | delete
    The weather this year has been crazy for us gardeners. Our springtime and usual planting days were cold and then summer came with a bang. Very hot days seemed to stunt all the plants. I was hand watering everything twice a day for about 2 weeks. We had a couple of nice rains when everything grew and then, exceptionally hot weather again. Our thermometer read 102F degrees today. I'm hand watering again. We try to use the sprinkler after the sun goes down but we have a big acreage and no underground system so it is impossible to water everywhere. Fruit trees, flowering shrubs and flower beds are all drying up. Waaaaa I'm thinking of doing a rain dance.
  • BarbRad Jul 24, 2009 @ 11:49 pm | in reply to grannysage | delete
    Zucchini is one thing I have never been able to grow much of. Everyone jokes about how much they get, but i'm lucky if I get ten medium size ones a summer. I had a good crop of lemon cucumbers two years ago and almost enough last year, but this year all i've been able to get from they plants is one baby cuke. The leaves look like they aren't happy, and I'm afraid the plants won't do anything this year. I should, however, get enough tomatoes from the plants that did not freeze.
  • grannysage Jul 24, 2009 @ 8:51 pm | delete
    Back in my "hippie" days, I tried some French Intensive gardening, I had great plans for all the produce I was going to grow and then can. All I can say is that it was very "intensive" gardening and I mostly got a lot of zucchini. I do admire anyone who can actually grow something!
  • GramaBarb Jul 24, 2009 @ 1:04 pm | delete
    I've lost plants over the years to an unexpected frost - but I guess I didn't wait long enough to see if they would grow back - they looked so bad that I pulled them out and started over.
  • Stazjia Jul 24, 2009 @ 5:42 am | delete
    How sad that they've got hit by something else after surviving the frost. I remember a few years ago when I went away for a week leaving my partner in charge of the garden and tomatoes. When I came back they were in the last stages of a fungal attack. There was nothing to do but pull them up and burn them to stop it spreading to anything else. I was very annoyed and upset.
  • paperfacets Jul 23, 2009 @ 10:56 pm | delete
    You had "come back" plants. Excellent.
  • BevsPaper Jul 23, 2009 @ 6:19 pm | delete
    Great lens on my favorite fruit the tomato! Old Jack Frost can sure give us headaches!
  • LindaJM Jul 23, 2009 @ 2:18 pm | delete
    My gardening disaster this year came from lack of watering. It was early in the spring and I was worried I was over-watering the plants. In the morning I noticed the ground appeared wet so I didn't water the tomatoes or squash. Big mistake! I nearly lost five plants and did actually give up on one tomato. It took more than a couple of weeks but my squash plants came back beautifully and are producing big-time. My tomato that almost died came back slowly and now has lots of flowers and tiny green tomatoes.

    Thanks for the information on your frost disaster. I was thinking that next year I'd start my plants before the end of April... and maybe you've changed my mind, or at least changed my strategy!

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BarbRad

In my life I've been student, public library clerk, English teacher in public school, elementary teacher in private schools,card buyer for Logos Bookstore... more »

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