Obligatory end of summer green tomato post.

I had a hunch it's going to be an early frost this year. Sometimes they happen in September, but the average first frost date here is Oct 15th. Last year we made it until October 20th or so before we had one. Same the year before that. Each year I suffer through ragweed season hoping we will have a frost ASAP. This year my allergy shots seem to be working well or else my cold is masking my allergies. But I'm not miserable the way I usually have been in the past.

But it's been cold at night when it's cloudy out -- and my feeling is as soon as it clears up it'll be quite a bit colder. The coldest int he last few days in the hoophouse has been 46 degrees. I checked out the forecast today and it's calling for lows in the 30s this week, maybe even into the 20s. So we may well have a killing frost soon. And some snow, according to the forecast!! Probably just a dusting of course -- I doubt I'll be cross country skiing down my street or anything.


SO I have to start harvesting as much as possible before it's too late. The tomatoes are a big issue. There are a ton of green tomatoes. There is just no way they are going to ripen in time. If I want to ripen them, I see three ways:

1) Dig them up, and hang them upside down in the basement.
2) Wrap individual tomatoes in paper bags and store them in basement.
3) Transplant plants into pots and put inside.

The guy at the farmers market told me I HAD to put the Sun Gold cherry tomato plant in a pot. So I heeded his advice. That will be coming inside today. The others I would have to dig up and transplant. They might not like that. But it might be worth a try.

I think I'm going to experiment. I have a lot of tomato plants. One issue with transplanting is these plants are BIG. So doing the hanging thing or wrapping the tomatoes probably makes more sense for most plants. Anyways, sounds like I'm going to be doing an experiment.