Tomato plants may be toast :(

Literally…I think the heat wave we’ve been having has actually toasted the leaves of my tomato plants. To try to rescue them, I’ve brought all 450 plants back indoors to hopefully recuperate. I didn’t realize that the seedlings were still too small to withstand the heat. If they don’t recover from their scorching, I’m going to have to buy tomato plants from other farmers and will have to start a second round of seedlings and hope the summer will be long enough to produce fruit from later tomato plants.

Poor scorched baby tomato plants. They’re barely even still green at all! And for those in the know, yes, they are quite stretched, which I don’t mind for tomato plants since I’ll plant them deep in the field so that the whole stalk will grow roots.

This season is so very opposite of last year’s cold and wet summer. The field grasses are already taller now than they were all last summer, and many flowers around the house are already finished blooming even though it’s not quite June yet.

I’ll just have to see how the vegetables grow this year. I’ve got drip line irrigation set up so the plants should get enough water in the field even if there are long stretches without rain (today’s thunderstorm sprinkling is the first rain since May 22…and that wasn’t much precipitation either). Theoretically, I should have a great growing season with all this sun, especially for hot crops. Unlike last year, my spinach, salad greens, and parsnip plantings have all germinated and are growing well, so that’s great. Beets and carrots are all showing themselves in the field, and bok choy and cabbages are coming along under their row covers. I’m hoping to harvest spinach and salad greens in the next couple weeks. And as soon as my sugar snap peas start producing tasty pods, I can start my vegetable deliveries into Toronto.

Please pray for good pea production and that my tomato plants recover and keep growing!