First Freeze Tonight

We had a cold front come through with storms last night, and a low temp of 28 degrees is predicted for tonight. That's the end of the season - my tomatoes, peppers, okra, cukes, basil, etc. will be dead tomorrow and I'll start clearing the garden. Only three rows of turnips will remain.

I'm amazed at how well some of my tomato plants have done this year, though. Here's my row of eleven experimental F2 generation crosses on a five-foot fence as they look this morning. They're still healthy with no sign of disease, and they're blooming and setting on green tomatoes like crazy. I've picked everything we can use off them, green and ripe, and it's time to let them go.

I think these plants are in awfully good shape for late October. My tomatoes of other varieties, like Big Beef and Cherokee Chocolate, are showing the usual late-season stresses and look nowhere near this good. I've saved seeds from three of these F2 plants to take to the F3 generation next year - and I'm hoping the surprising vigor of these plants was somehow caused by the cross I made.

Hah, which means that here where I am in zone 5 in the tundra I haven't had a hard frost or even an easy one. I'm up off the valley floor a couple of hundred feet and while those who live down in the village have had frost, not up here.

Just unrelenting rain, rain, rain, cool and clammy, overcast ,with the sun shining through for no longer than an hour or so.

And it doesn't look like a freeze next week either.

I think this is the latest I've ever had a first frost here and the earliest was two years in a row where first frost was on Spet 7th and 9th those two years, not that I forget such dates. LOL

Carolyn

It appears you had a nice crop with good production Ozark, in spite of the rocky start to the season.
If I recall, you got all the rain early on. Good to see the net results!

Just rain, rain, rain here, too. I've had more rain-logged tomatoes this year than ever before. All-in-all, not a bad year. After 4 years of "unusually rainy and cool", I'm barely remembering the good ole days of sunshine and heat. Personally, I can live without the excess heat, but the tomatoes sure miss the dry sunshine days.

Well, Ozark how did they do? Sequee-all we've had is sunshine and heat. A couple of weekends back we had a good rain and now at least we have some grass growing.

"Well, Ozark how did they do?"
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It was kind of a strange year, but it worked out OK. We had several weeks of cold temps and heavy rains after I got the garden planted in May, so I had to do some replanting. Then about the first week of June temps went into the 90s and sometimes 100's and stayed there for three months! Tomatoes didn't set on well because of the heat, and they were very late this year.

Temps have been reasonable since about the first of September, so I got a lot of late tomatoes set on and some had time to ripen, some didn't.

Hehe I meant did they freeze to the ground. It didn't get as cold here as they predicted. When I have tomatoes like you showed above, sometimes they don't freeze all the way just get burned.

"Hehe I meant did they freeze to the ground. It didn't get as cold here as they predicted. When I have tomatoes like you showed above, sometimes they don't freeze all the way just get burned."
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Oh, OK. They didn't freeze at all last night. The temp reached 31 but it was windy we're up on the side of a hill and there was no damage visible. Tonight's a different story, though - the weatherman says it'll be 28 and that'll get 'em if it happens.

Condolences about the outcome of the first St. Louis/Texas World Series game, just ended. Hehehe.

That cold will slow down the reactions and thoughts of the players I am afraid. And luck was not on the TX side tonight. But all is not lost... lol

Covered my tomatoes and cukes, hoping we don't see a frost yet.

Dont get Fox on my rabbit ears and I REFUSE to pay for local Channels, maybe I will for this month. I dont know why I can get all the other major networks BUT Fox has been a no go since shortly after the converter box thing. Any advise?

No, I don't know. We've got everything on cable here - TV, Internet, even our home phone. Strangely enough, our cable company is in Tyler, TX and every time I have trouble I have to talk to some young person in Tyler who's not real sure where Missouri is, let alone why our cable's not working. We've got several hundred channels and I think Fox may be on cable and satellite only, not broadcast by local stations.

At least it's not in India!!!

We had our first (light) frost last night, but 50 miles from here they had snow.

This was not a bad tomato season, but it certainly was far from the best. From now on, I will only grow heirlooms from seed. Today we picked the last of the tomatoes (mostly green), and they were all from the plants we purchased (from a reputable grower). We started eating those sown indoors in August.

We seem to have the least luck with potato leaf plants. We had the best luck with Ozark Pinks (or Pink Ozarks). In any case despite the work it was a lot of fun to reap the fruit.

We got abut a half inche on Thursday night, but EGAD are we getting it today. I came to work this morning just to get everything organized. Left at 12:15 and made it about 6 miles before I took a total spin out, landing in the center median. Thank God it was grassy and I managed to get myself righted and back across the street, where I sat waiting for a tow truck for an hour and a half before the police finally took control. While the officer was walking back to his car, a tree came down and landed smack in between our cars. Scared the ooh-ha out of both of us! Now my car is in in North White Plains and I am back at my office, both of us without any visible scars!

I didn't have a really good tomato year either. Certainly not the worst ever, but disappointing. The majority of my tomatoes came in considerably under-sized, but the falvor was good and I had a decent enough crop. I've been diversifying since the late blight debacle, so I did get some very good greens, beans, peppers, and squash. Seems like about 4 years since I've had a really stellar tomato season.

I had a good tomato season and got plenty to freeze, but it ended too soon because of Early Blight. I'll have to figure out a way to avoid that next year; the challenge is always doing that without chemicals!

Its been a good year here despite some very hot weather for a few days. I still am harvesting a few tomatoes each day and have bunces of green ones still on the vines and lots of new blooms. I think this will be the first year, I can get a ripe one in Nov.

Here's the same scene as the photo in the first post of this thread, taken this morning. We've had a couple of hard freezes, and I did some work clearing the garden and getting it ready for winter. What a difference in the two pictures, huh?

Well, this is the end of our growing season (except for three rows of turnips still in the ground), but in only 4 months or so I'll be starting seeds indoors and it'll all begin again.

Ozark, that's a cheerful thought! I just pulled all of my pepper plants and gave them to the chickens; last night we had our first frost and it killed everything. But you're right - in four months the cycle starts again, and even earlier if you count the poring over of seed catalogues by the fire in December and January!

We're on a hill here in an older part of Omaha called "Benson", so we've not actually had frost or freeze. In fact, as of today, even the big pots of Coleus in the back yard are still fairly happy. Our lows here seem to run 4 to 6 degrees above predicted. That will probably change tonight--we started with big drops of wet cold rain, now turned to big wet glops of floppy snow, and they (meaning Earl, the Weather God) is talking 27 degrees.

I've still got some fine-looking San Marzanos on the vine.