Silicon,
I guess if I were you I would harvest everything and put the green
tomatoes on a window sill to ripen.

If you have the time and the energy, you may want to build a green house
(tunnel) over your tomatoes, if you think there may be more good days
ahead.

The following is a discussion I had with "simy1"

James wrote:

Huh? A PVC pipe for each hoop costs $1.60. 100 feet of 12 ft poly costs
$27. The clamps will cost you another $20, and you have to have some
bricks to hold down the poly on windy days (concrete chunks will do as
well). If treated well, the poly lasts three years and the clamps and
hoops last forever. You are looking at $15 per winter harvest.

Works if you don't live in a windy area. It's easier to hold down the
poly than to keep it from tearing. Hoop tunnels 2' or 3' may work
better in windy areas.

I live in a fairly windy area. It took me a couple winters to get the
tunnels down pat. You need clamps, double clamps at the end of the
tunnels, and a smooth tunnel with some poly laying on the path, wieghed
down by bricks, so that no air can get inside. I never had a blowout
when there is deep snow, it seals the tunnels perfectly.

Yes, the tunnels are low enough that you can crawl under. The beds are
about 25 ft long, and 4ft wide, so one sheet, cut into three, covers
them all with a few feet of waste. You need the sheets to be several
feet longer than the beds to tuck the ends properly.

You buy the PVC pipes at Home Depot that are, from memory, 3/4" thick.
You also buy the 100X12 rolls of clear plastic from the Paint section.
I prefer 4mils, but 6 or even 2 will usually do (I have tried all
three). The PVC pipes are 12 ft long. You cut them at an angle at the
tips, bend them, and stick them one foot into the ground on either
side. Total hoop length: 10 feet.

You can either put a hoop every four feet, which makes it a bit
difficult to maneuver a wheelbarrow, or every 7 feet, like I do, and
them put an extra pipe on top of the hoops for extra strength, secured
to the hoops with cable ties and a screw to avoid slipping. The top
pipes are connected to one another with PVC cement and a connector,
exactly as if you were building your plumbing.

Once you have all the hoops in place, and I leave them there, summer
and winter, you garden the beds normally until it is time to cover
them. The clamps can be found at Territorial Seeds and are half
cylinder that clamp onto the pipes tigthly, grabbing the plastic. They
are excellent. The one foot of plastic on either side (12-10=2) can be
held down with bricks. The ends, too, can be held down with bricks. The
secret to keep the tunnels going in windy weather is to make sure as
little air as possible comes in. Specially the ends, I put down a
continuous line of bricks to eliminate air leaks. If there is snow on
the ground, no air comes in and the seal is perfect.

The plastic I am suggesting is not UV-treated and is not indicated for
summer use. In my case, I use it for about 3-4 years, and typically I
toss it due to various mechanical tears, like when I try to get ice off
of it. There is negligible UV degradation in the winter. I cover on the
Thanksgiving weekend and uncover on April 1.

That's the best advice I can offer but with any luck someone else in the
news group will come up with a different approach.

I'm in Northern California and my main concern is rain that can hammer
my plants into a pulp. Hopefully I'll be able to address this problem
but presently I am working 10 to 11 hours a day, 6 days a week, which
leaves me precious little time for my garden. However, Sunday my wife
and I smoked some ribs and the last of our corn. She made some potatoes
with onion and garlic and I did a tomato salade with basil and
mozzarella, and a side dish of romano beans. It was one of the best
meals we have had this year. There is nothing like cooking from the
garden.

Good luck and start planning for next year, if you haven't already.

- Bill

In article .com,
wrote:

William L. Rose wrote:
I'm still waiting on my Branywines but the Striped German tomatoes have
just reached maturity. I was reading "The Politics of Food" by Marion
Nestle, when my wife put the evening salad on the table. I finished a
couple of more sentences when the purfume of tomatoes wafted into my
consciousness. The tomatoes weren't overwhelming in flavor. No full body
orgasm as you might expect fom heroin but subtly, persuasivly tomato-y
(not to put too fine a point on it). I was pleased with my season's work.


Hi Bill and All, Have made second harvest of Brandywines, about eight
each of 4+ incher. The taste is much better. Since we have been having
2 weeks of rain and cool damp weather, mildew has appeared and attacked
the Brandywines first. We got some organic mildewcide, but probably
with the cool fall weather, it will be too late to be any use. Our
first frost, in SE Minnesota, probably will occur on schedule in a
couple weeks, Oct 1.

It appears that the Beam's Yellow Pear tomatoes is going to be far and
away the most prolific heirloom, with vines 8+ft long. They are
overtaking the Brandywines, Amish Paste, and Stupice. The Amish Paste
were the least productive. Too bad the 1 inch long Beam's tomatoes are
more trouble than they are worth!

During the cool, rainy spell, the Stupice are showing skin cracking on
the shoulder of almost every tomato. What causes this?

Should we harvest all tomatoes (ripe or not) during the eve of the
first hard frost?

Regards, Phil

-----

In article . com,
wrote:

wrote:
Penelope Periwinkle wrote:
On 24 Aug 2006 14:57:43 -0700, wrote:

Why are our Brandywines taking so long? Why is there such a fruit
size
difference between Stupice and Brandywines?

They're different varieties, that's why. Brandywines have been
selected to produce fewer but larger tomatoes, and it takes longer

Our largest Stupice still is about 1 1/2", now into our third partial
harvest. Any way to encourage growth to 2 1/2", the advertised size?
Regards, Phil