As the first frost looms around us, threatening to nip my tender garden with it’s frigid fingers any night now…..and I am having a hard time letting go.  You may already know, my tomatoes are overly doted upon, but to me everything I have given them has been worth it.  It all started way back in January you see, sowing those baby seeds, a bit early maybe, but I just couldn’t wait. I watering and pinching back flowers,

fertigating and tending to their care daily, and they grew and grew and grew

Until it was time to harden them off and send them out into the great wide world

Where a ceremonial garden once grew

…we rearranged things a bit to accomodate our growing family of vegetables.

Wheel burrow upon wheel burrow of yummy Soilutions compost, bags and bags and bags of my neighbors leaves,

rototilling,

hand digging, fluffing, shaping of soil into beds…..

drip tape irrigation,

Finally planting them loving into the well prepped earth

Mulching like crazy

Even laying tiles in the paths for solar/rain collection as well as for walking…excessive maybe, but I had them laying around

staking,

tying & pruning & training

And of course the waiting……

And then one fine, late July day, they started to come on.. pound by pound….

…..by pound

.

Well paced, but incredibly abundant!!

And boy were they good!  It was all worth it!

There were a few problems of course, like blossom end rot

And some serious cracking

But I still ate them of course

and sauced and roasted and stewed them —

125lbs pounds of ripe gorgeous tomatoes to date, and at the looks of things I might still be in for plenty more.

You see, my husband decided he could whip a little hoop house over them to protect them from frost and help them ripen.

I thought he was crazy at first,I mean they are over 6 feet high by now… but of course, whip on up he did.

With 8 cattle panels, contractors plastic

an old post from a stop sign & some scrap lumber made into a ridge pole, some bailing wire and some of those cool paper fastener things….

Amounting to about $275 and 2 afternoons… we got ourselves and hothouse baby!!

And hot it is, steaming in fact, so much the tomatoes were sweating and my camera was clouding up.

It is all an experiment of course, I have no idea how it will all end, but I do know it sure was tasty fun and I will let you know when they finally fade,

but for now….no frosty nights for these girls!