For the last two days I have made Caddo relish and sweet relish trying to get the tomatoes turned into something before really cold weather hit ! But I thought the weatherman could be wrong and his prediction of 26 degrees was off a bit ! So I left those turning red and the rest of the small ones for today ! Also several large ones that were going to be fried green tomatoes later this week ! Well,, looking at the temperature this morning the weatherman under estimated it,, was 22 degrees last night ! I have a bowl of green ones waiting in the kitchen and likely the rest of the smaller ones will be chow chow in the next few days ! These tomatoes were grown in pots and only 4 or 5 plants ! My thinking is that fall tomatoes do much better than spring summer tomatoes and can be fairly cold hardy ! They have survived several nights of 29 to 32 degrees with no damage to anything but the leaves which are expendable anyway ! Will be interesting to see how they did last night ! Cross your fingers for the rest of them,, I was looking forward to fried green tomatoes !
good luck there Mart. I also think Fall tomatoes are a bit hardier but those are pretty cold to survive in. we saw it was 27 clear down in Zapata this morning. I hope my fruit trees are okay. probably since they are little and probably have weeds around them they may have a little more protection than big trees... hoping hoping.
Well,, lost a few that were out in the open but as it turned out those thatwere going to be fried green tomatoes were ok ! They were in the grass and between the styrofoam planter boxes ! they were pretty cold but not frozen and still firm after warming up ! So I will have fried green tomatoes after all ! The rest are mush ! The tomatoes were Celebrity so the heirloom factor may have played a part in their survival ! All were grown from limb cuttings that I rooted ! If I had covered them with plastic they would still be going strong i think ! I have never seen that many tomatoes on the few plants I had ! But I grow mine so close together that pollination is excellent even in the fall !
