Tomato – Fall Harvest

Q: Our fall tomato crop has been great! They made it through the hot summer and we cut them back, thinking they were done. They started growing and blooming again!

A: Your experience is the same as mine. I’ve discovered that if you can keep them alive in summer, tomatoes do great in fall. Much credit goes to lower day and night temperatures. Blooms stay on longer and are more apt to be pollinated. Cool temperatures also aid tomato ripening. If you still have green ones when a frost approaches, pick them and store in crumpled newspaper. Bring a few out every week to ripen on a sunny windowsill.

Jane B. adds: We heard you mention that if we got our plants in the ground by the first of August , a second tomato crop was possible. Well, we are so pleased I just had to share with you our success!

Our summer crop was exclusively “Early Girl” and besides sharing and eating as many as possible, we also canned nearly thirty quarts. Then, we took cuttings from those plants and on the first of August, got those young plants in the ground. We planted 14 and lost only 2. We are eating ripe tomatoes daily and a few weeks ago with the cold nights, the vines began to die. Last week, I brought in the last of the green ones. We have approximately 70 tomatoes in various stages of ripening in a cool, dark room.

We live in Commerce, Georgia

Jane Bedell

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