"K" wrote in message
...
slide writes
Is this a remarkable thing - a tomato plant lasting more than one
year
AND withstanding freezes? Or are we making a celebration over
nothing in
particular. BTW, it's fruit now is just reaching ripe - at least a
month
ahead of its younger competition.

No surprises at it lasting more than one year - it is a perennial.
In the UK we grow it as an annual because it can't cope with our
long, cold, wet winters with very low light levels (even some cacti
can cope with frost if they are bone dry - it's the continuous cold
wet that does for them).

I hadn't considered it as coping with frost, but the occasional
frosty night with brighter days is very different from long periods
of sun rising at nearly 9am and setting before 4pm and never getting
high into the sky, temperature not rising above 40deg F and
sometimes staying below freezing all day.

According to wikipedia, the enzyme that causes the ripening stops
working at below 54 deg.
--
Kay

Tomatoes are short lived perrenials usually grown as annuals or
biennials.

After two fruiting seasons the plants rarely reach flowering again.

My cousing in Northern Italy grows the plants in year one and lies
them down, covered for winter by fleece AND polythene. The next season
the sideshoots are developed vertically as stems which grow pretty
much as UK plants. The first season produces the horizontal plant up
to 12 feet (San Mazarno). The yield is reportedly superior to
individual plants.

I've also seen this done in Majorca. It probably takes place elsewhere
too.

TJ