Tomatos In Peril

Exactly how far can one go into summer without planting the warm weather crops? Things that I really, really want to be successful, like tomatoes and peppers. I planted some tomato plants outdoors a few weeks ago, and they are not looking so hot. I'm down to just the heirlooms, and they aren't looking so hot.

I'm blaming it on the cool spring we are having. Most days the high is just 75 or below. Last year at this time I had been running our air conditioning for a month. So hooray for my cool weather crops, we all know that weather makes for productive spinach (another pound yesterday). But what about my warm weather stuff? Will it have enough summer time to grow if I keep on waiting for 80 degree weather.

And do I hope for tomatoes at the expense of my broccoli? Google expert that I now am on broccoli, I know it should be harvested before daily temperatures are regularly in the 80s.

So, we have decided to take on a dramatic new tomato warming plan (insert dunt-da-da music). It involves coffee cans, which means I get to drink more coffee (celebratory dance here). We saw someone else doing it, basically they just put coffee cans with the bottoms cut out around their tomato plants. My husband thinks it will keep them warm and wet. I'm hoping their buzz will make them grow and produce massive quantities of tomatoes.

I've been drooling over my packet of heirloom seeds since I bought them. The descriptions of the different plants for which I have seeds were so yummy sounding I wanted to bite into the paper. And I've been dreaming of the incredible sauces, salsas and such I'd be turning them into in order to savor their colorful yumminess well into the winter.

Let's face it, there is nothing worse in the garden world than the thought of resorting to those mealy, grainy, burnt orange blah that grocery stores put out and try to call tomatoes. When they label them "vine ripened", I nearly laugh myself to tears in the produce department.

It was just a few months ago that I swore off these abominations. I did so with the full purpose and intention of growing an obscene amount of tomatoes in my experimental garden. If there is one thing I can grow, it's tomatoes. They are the only successful crop I've had for the past five years. The thought of going without for a whole year...Is there life without tomatoes?

Broccoli Shockoli

Did you know that broccoli and cauliflower are mulitharvest crops? Did you know they weren't just a once and done kind of thing. I did not know this. I have 25 broccoli and cauliflower plants growing in one of my garden beds.

That's right, 25. I had company over a few evenings ago for my son's first birthday. Someone asked me if "all those plants were broccoli and cauliflower?" (insert slow enunciation and questioning look). When I said yes and excused myself into the house, said guest preceded to explain to my husband that both plants continue to fruit (or vegetable as the case may be) as long as they are cut before they flower.

Ok, I should have done a little research before planting. I give you that much. But the whole experiment of the garden was to see how productive I could be without actually putting forth a lot of formal effort. Like research or planning, for example.

So now my problems are twofold.

1. I now have to learn the appropriate way to cut broccoli and cauliflower before they flower, (google, where are you?)

2. I'm going to have a whole lot of both veggies to figure out what to do with, (fingers crossed that they freeze well). Where is my 1956 Preserving Guide?

3. I get that cauliflower can flower, it is right there in the name. But how can you have a broccoli flower? How does it look in a vase?