With a week to go in September, I finally picked the first tomato from my small, backyard garden. I had some coming along earlier, but a thieving coon with a fondness for unfried green tomatoes picked me clean. I figured that was it for my 2017 tomato crop, but the vines kept blooming and I now have ripe tomatoes. It makes me wonder if I should wait a spell before getting those tomato plants in the ground in early spring. Just because it’s a few days past the last frost warning doesn’t mean you have to plant then.
Something else that I enjoyed later this season was yellow squash. I had a handful of squash early in the summer, then the hot, dry weather hit and they went sort of dormant. But lo and behold, around the first of September I picked some beautiful, unblemished yellow squash.
With gardens, you never know, except for two things.
Onions and cherry tomatoes. Onions always do well. You can plow then up and they’ll spring back to life. Cherry tomatoes are also dependable.
While the big tomatoes languished, my cherry tomato plants, though a little late, have been showing their stuff. I get a pint or so a day off three vines, and they don’t show any signs of letting up. I expect to have salad tomatoes until the first frost, and with 89-degree temperatures two days before October, that could be a while.