I took down what remained of the tomato jungle. I kept everything with a yellow tinge and above. There were hundreds of lovely, very green cherry tomatoes. It was sad to push them all into the trash bin. But that is that. It's done now. I pulled the dahlias, put all the summer plants inside, and covered a few things outside with frost covers. It was an exhausting two days. There are still a few things to do, but it will have to wait until after this blast.

Trash?! Bring 'em up here and I'll compost 'em! :)

I picked quite a few green cherry tomatoes as well; I'm testing out the paper bag ripening method, and I figure if that doesn't work I may just try pickling them.

Green tomatoes are an important ingredient in my chili verde. I always freeze quite a few at the end of every season. Sure, a lot wind up getting tossed, but I always try to find room for as many as I can, the only way to get them is to grow your own, after all ;).

It's more like the end of the beginning for me. And, about time! This frost mitigation is tiring.

Oh, I'm still doing that here at home but the nearest wunderground thermometer to the big veggie garden has it as 26°f at 4am. It is one degree cooler than when I checked at 3.

No running out there in the dark, turning on sprinklers and sitting around in the truck ... The first frost was 9/22 and it's been something of a hand to hand fight with Jack Frost from that morning on! I'll be in and out here in the backyard but other than that, I'm having a cuppa tea and breakfast!

Steve

Hey Zach, wanna share that recipe? :)

digit, that doesn't sound like much fun. Our first frost here was a week or two ago, but it was so light that even the basil survived.

We've gotten some snow so far and it's still coming down, so I'm very glad I harvested just about everything yesterday -- I /probably/ ought to go harvest the rest of the herbs before it gets much colder, but I'd much rather curl up in front of the fireplace with a book. Oh the conflict...

Zach lives too far away for my green tomatoes and I can't imaging loading up my car with the tomato vines to compost them. But I will keep it in mind for next year Oladon.

Oh well...it's over now.

Oladon, I'd love to share... but I don't really "know" it. I have never measured and sometimes some stuff gets forgotten and other times new stuff gets added! My chili verde is always a little bit different every time I make it!

What I do know is this:

-Pork cut up into cubes

-Salt, pepper, coriander & cumin

Salsa verde (I make mine with green tomatoes, some jalapenos, and tomatillos)

Fire roasted green chilies, typically New Mexico chilies, but I have recently discovered Colorado's own Pueblo chilies which I personally like better.

Sometimes if its too thick I add chicken broth. Sometimes it doesn't need it.

Pretty simple stuff, or at least it used to be. So far I have seen ZERO places to buy the roasted green chilies here in the Grand Canyon state. We may not have snow and little in the way of freezing temperatures, but without fire roasted green chilies, whays the point of living at all?!

It does snow in Arizona! Maybe not in 85% of the state, but the White Mountains and San Francisco Peaks get their share. :)

I've never tried salsa verde with green tomatoes -- definitely gonna have to give that a shot.

Well, it might be the BEGINNING of the end, but it's not really the END of the end for me yet here in Thornton! I spent most of the day on Sunday building a "room" for my tomatoes to keep their toes warm in! Constructed it with a roof of steel "cross-beams" which are the "sides" of a bunch of commercial grade steel shelving units (disassembled) that I have--laid them from the top of two step ladders over to the privacy fence and then put more the "other direction!" Then I laid all my cuke trellises across those--covered almost the whole thing. Then I put a layer of wool packing blankets over the whole top, put a plastic drop cloth over those, and put a layer of sheets on top of the plastic--to help keep it from blowing away! THEN I laid some 6' stakes across the top and weighted them down with bricks--again, to keep "anything" from blowing away! It was pretty windy for the next 24 hours! Then I "attached" blankets to the "roof" all the way around the sides to form the "walls!" Built a "shorter extension" on the front of the building with two little 3-step ladders to protect the eggplants that are right next to the tomatoes! All the walls are weighted down on the bottom with bricks and a few rocks! When all the walls were assembled I climbed inside--thru one of the step ladders!--and put three sockets with 200 watt bulbs in them in there--since my tomatoes are all mulched with dry leaves I put them in double tin foil pie tins to be sure the whole thing wouldn't go up in FLAMES in the middle of the nite!

By then it was 7:00 and getting dark out fast! After pinning my "door" shut I came in and "plugged the thing in!" I could see there was lite in it, so I assumed all was working as planned! It didn't get that cold Sunday nite--I think only down to about freezing, but I did get, I estimate, 3-4" of snow over nite! Monday I HAD to know what was going on out there, so after the snow pretty much stopped I unpinned my Door and climbed in again! Only one of the bulbs was lit! One of them happened to be in a place where it was possible for water to drip, and apparently cold water had dripped on the hot bulb and it had burst! One bulb was just not on, and I eventually figured out that the cord that one was on wasn't plugged in all the way! The tomatoes were FINE! I replaced the one bulb, plugged the one all the way in and verified that it was working, and ADDED a fourth bulb, just to be sure--Monday nite, at one point, "they" were saying was gonna get down to 22º here, but by late Monday they had upped that to 26º, but, you never know! With four bulbs working I pinned the door back shut and kept my fingers crossed! Tuesday I looked inside again, and the tomatoes and eggplants are all cozy and warm! One of the four bulbs had apparently burned out at some point so there were only three on. I only got down to 28º on Monday nite!

On Monday nite, AFTER I had it all "put back together again" I was wishing I had thought to put one of my remote thermometers in The Tomato House, but by the time I thought of it it was dark again and I wasn't about to be out there in the dark trying to visit my tomatoes. But yesterday, Tuesday, I did climb under the ladder to go inside again and I took the thermometer with me!

Last nite I got down to 32º! INSIDE my Tomato House, with three of the 200 watt bulbs working, it only got down to 43º! I decided to leave the walls up yet today, and haven't been inside again--it really is quite an "ordeal" to climb under The Ladder, thru all the WET wool blankets! Today it got up to 67º inside and is 59º in there right now! (I turned the bulbs off this morning!) Tomorrow I'll probably "unbrick" the bottoms of the walls and flip them up on top of the roof so I can get some air circulation back in there!

What do I expect to accomplish with all this work??? Ok, first of all, I'm Olde and Retired, and have plenty of time to do it--AND need the exercise anyway, especially with Long Dark Un-Gardening WINTER coming up! By now the sun is far enough down on the horizon that the tomatoes don't get a lot of sun anymore! With my Spring Trip I once again didn't get my tomatoes put in until the beginning of July! For me I had a very successful Tomato Year (especially compared to last year when apparently my tomatoes weren't watered at all the whole three weeks I was gone on my FALL trip--when all I managed to grow was the most humongous batch of white flies I've ever seen!), but almost all of them are still all the way green! They just need more time! How much, if any, they'll still grow, is VERY questionable! But by leaving them in the ground for as long as I can some of them should start ripening on the vines--before I need to finally cut them and hang them in the garage to ripen the rest of the way! By leaving them in the ground they're still getting water thru the vines--once they're cut off that stops, and, while they will ripen very slowly when hung, eventually the vines don't have enough moisture left and they gradually start to dehydrate! I'd like to think it helped to cover the eggplants, but I really don't think it did! The were put in "late" too, and they have a LOT of flowers and some "too small to eat" fruit, but with the lack of sun and the, now, cold nite temps, I think it's a pipe dream to hope I'll get more off of the plants this year!

Before I started my Construction Project I cut down two tomatoes that had been "extra" that I had planted further down the side of my house, away from the main tomato bed. They're both cherries and I cut off all the leaves, tied them together on the bottom--one is red and one is yellow--and hung them in the garage. There's a lot of fruit on those two vines, so they can now start their slow "upside down" ripening in there! Cherry tomatoes I can just pick and use whenever they happen to be ready! Or, can pick them and eat them as I'm going by to get in my car!!! I also cut all the (few) ripe/starting to ripen ones and brought them in, and also picked all the eggplants that were big enough to eat now--just in case my Tomato Room didn't actually work! When I started the Project I didn't have a CLUE what I was gonna use to build it with!

Since there's so little sun now I'll probably just leave the "roof" on my Tomato Room for the rest of this season. That way I can flip the sides/walls up or down as necessary, depending on what the night temps are gonna be! I still have my fingers crossed that it'll warm up for a couple more weeks before we get really "ongoing" cold! But even if the nites keep getting "too cold," now that I have the "structure" up and the bulbs in there I can leave them in the ground for at least another 2 or 3 weeks before I have to bring them all in!

And now we all enter the Dark Drear of Winter! December 21 can't be TOO far away, can it?????

Skybird

Wow, Skybird -- I'm alternating between amazed and jealous right now! All my tomato and pepper plants appear completely dead, which is to be expected, of course. My eggplant got in rather late as well, and I was just hoping I might get one fruit from it before winter arrived... oh well. I hope your efforts pay off and you get many beautiful tomatoes yet! :)

Bravo, Skybird!

The contrast with ...most anyone is, indeed, amazing. After stocking a neighbor's garden with tomato plants every year, the neighbor is seen to make some efforts to have a couple more weeks to the season. This year, I provided a tarp about a week ago. She has it draped over the fence.

The night before last, it had lifted up in the wind and was 90% back over the fence. I moved it to 50% and she appears to have spread it out again. It accompanies the lightest, slightest, truly gossamer coverage of a drop cloth. We have had a good deal of wind lately and the plants are severely damaged by frost since they are nearly entirely exposed by the time freezing occurs each and every morning! Perhaps she is bothering with it just as a gesture to show appreciation for the plants. The one that I can see clearly has some huge beefsteaks on it but I'm more sad to see her daily efforts than pleased.

I wish she would just pick them for her kitchen counter and suggested that but from the face she made, I could recognize that she doesn't think much of countertop tomato ripening ...

My soup making has continued apace and I'm mostly keeping up. DW has learned to appreciate my efforts, thankfully. Maybe, I have just improved over the years. Including the speed of tomato soup preparation has probably not helped towards that end but I take some pride in it!

It is difficult to garden when the wind is such a factor. There is a 27° windchill at the airport right now at 4:30 but I don't believe it's freezing. Throughout the actual growing season, the plants suffer but I can't remember a fall when first frost and snow occurs simultaneously like CO seems to have it !

There is a "nice" rainstorm heading up the Columbia, right now. After a little relief from the drought a couple of weeks ago, we had all of 4/100" of precipitation, yesterday. Yeah, somehow the WS is able to measure something like that! Everything needs some moisture ... except the highways. I hope the pavement dries before Saturday morning when clear skies are predicted to return. ... sparkling stars above and freezing temperatures below.

Steve