Fruits and veggies?

[JScott]

Originally Posted by estación seca

Between November and April every workplace break room in metro Phoenix will feature shopping bags or boxes filled with citrus to take home free - lemons, oranges, grapefruit. The trees are incredibly productive. I am always amazed newcomers to the area will do things like plant 3 lemon trees, rather than an assortment of citrus, because they think they like lemons. They have no idea the enormous number of lemons even a young lemon tree produces. I tell them that, when they wish they had other kinds of citrus, I will show them how to graft, and provide budwood. Citrus are very easy to graft with a T and shield bud graft in early Spring and late Fall.



In our climate tomatoes must go into the ground as early as possible, because once it gets good and hot, they die. Many years the plants will die by mid May. Our last potential frost date is March 15. That means planting seeds indoors on January 1, setting them out February 15, and being prepared to cover or otherwise protect them from frost.

As a result we can grow only very-short-days-to-harvest tomatoes, with even 70 days stretching it. This excludes all the heirlooms. Most people plant Celebrity or Early Girl. Cherry tomatoes are more tolerant of heat, and the earlier-bearing ones are usually good producers well past the bigger tomatoes.

We can plant tomatoes again when nights begin cooling somewhat in the fall, but if that happens late and we have an early frost, we get nothing. I know people who grow tomatoes in plastic hoop tunnels over the winter, but sometimes we get stiff wind combined with freezing temperatures, and even a hoop tunnel isn't enough.

That saddens me that you have such trouble with tomatoes. They are one of my favorite parts of my summer garden. That being said, I have grown Celebrity, and have enjoyed it much. It is a determinate variety, correct, so you get your whole crop of tomatoes at about the same time? If it is actually Celebrity that I'm thinking of it, and it's nice to have a whole lot of tomatoes at once for canning and making sauces and such.