Remember how I bragged back in July about how our garden was growing like crazy, and we were harvesting a ton of lettuce and strawberries? Well, not a lot has happened since then.
Our tomato plants and beans grew and grew and grew like crazy, consuming our entire garden to the point where we have to hack our way in every time we go to water it. The bean plants in particular are constantly grabbing onto our tomatoes and the tomatoes in the garden next door, like some kind of hungry tentacled monster.
This seemed like a good sign, but where’s all the produce?
I believe 2 of our 12 tomato plants (8 planted tomato plants and another 4 or so naturally occurring) have actually made tomatoes. And even those are hardly producing. The beans have just offered up a handful of beans, but I’m hoping that’s because we started them late.
Why aren’t our tomatoes producing? We currently have 2 theories. The first is that it was just too hot at the wrong time. My sister said that the plants won’t produce flowers when the temperature is over 100. This could explain it, since we had a heat wave right at the time that the plants should have been blowing up. The other theory is that we seem to have some aphids this year. We also have ladybugs, so the situation seems to be controlling itself, but one gardener posited that perhaps the tomatoes were worried about growing defenses rather than fruit.
Luckily we got 13 pounds of tomatoes from my dad, so we spent 3 1/2 hours on Sara’s birthday canning 7 quarts of tomatoes.
The only things that seem to be going well in the garden right now are the peppers (and the eggplant). Specifically, our jalapeno plant is going like gangbusters. I picked 15 large jalapenos the other day, and there were still more coming. This was after we had already frozen about all that we would probably use (I have to admit, we don’t use a ton of jalapenos in a year, especially since we haven’t canned any salsa so far this year).
I’m still holding out a little hope that the tomatoes are just delayed, and we still may get some kind of tomato explosion. Then we can all look back on this post and have a good laugh together, as we try to give them away to anyone who will take them.
Please?
Shane Halbach 
Praying to the garden gods as well… I’ll throw in a good word for your tomatoes. Mine have produced lots of fruit (in the Reisentraube variety that I bought from an heirloom seed catalog) but will NOT ripen. I go out every day looking for all of the red fruit, and only find one or two. It is keeping our ability to eat without getting sick of tomatoes in check, though.
My eggplant and peppers are retarded and I am holding a grudge. I am a little wary of using seeds and starting them indoors again… it made everything so slow this year! I am now attempting to grow an indoor hot pepper plant that is actually better suited for pots all year round.
I have a good Thai stir fry recipe that would utilize your jalapenos!
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