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Re: 'hot tomatoes'

That's also been my experience.  Even though we rarely have a frost
after mid-April (except for the 06June "disaster of 91") our nights are
very cool.  If I put out my tomatoes in the open in mid-May they don't
yield very well as we still often have overnight lows of around 40 deg F
(4-5 deg C) that time of year.  

I use a tunnel cloche and black plastic mulch to start the season a week
or three early, but I'm switching to a compost mulch this year.  I think
the plastic (woven landscape fabric) retains late blight spores and the
humidity in the cloche lets them reach the plants.  (That's a theory --
but I got some late blight last year even though the plants were covered
and I think it was from the plastic, which was several years old.  I
lost an entire crop to the blight in '94 and I think some of the plastic
was the same as I was using that year.)

Steve  (Maritime...)


Allan Day wrote:
> 
> A word of warning
> Don't be fooled by the survival of tomato plants at low temperatures.
> Scientific trials have shown that in commercial tomato production
> if the plants ever suffer temperatures below 10C/50F for a
> significant time their cropping power will be significantly impaired.
> --
> Allan Day Hereford HR2 7AU allan@crwys.demon.co.uk
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