Bye Amish Paste Tomato Plant

It's cold.  My face is cold, my fingers are cold.  It's cold.  What happened??  It feels like we just went right into winter. I think the first fall frost date is supposed to be around Oct. 31st here, but I think it's coming early!! It got really cold last night so I ended up covering some of my beds to protect them just in case it actually got frosty; and because of the drop in temp, I decided to kill my lone tomato plant today.  Of the three varieties of tomatoes I planted this year, I had one Amish Paste tomato plant that out performed all of the others.  It became this monstrosity that decided to use my Korean pepper plant's cage for added support.

I thought by September, the plant would just stop growing and stop producing but it was the opposite.  In September, this plant started to produce even more while my other tomato plants started to slow down.  I even stopped watering and it actually did even better becoming incredibly lush and green!!  At the end of September, I finally had some tomatoes start ripening on the vine so I went ahead and picked them before some critter could get to them. They've been ripening beautifully on my kitchen windowsill.

I'm hoping the ones I picked today will do the same.

I will definitely be growing this variety again.  I've picked a spot in one of the raised beds to grow them in the spring.  I am definitely NOT using felt pots to grow tomatoes ever again, though.  It was pretty evident towards the end that the tomatoes did not like to be grown in felt pots.  My other Amish Paste plant that I transplanted into a felt pot didn't fruit at all.  It was stunted and just didn't flourish even with fertilizer and regular watering.  The same went for the other tomato plants, although, they did produce some tomatoes.  Now pepper plants are another story.  They thrived in the felt pots and are still producing and growing at the moment.  I may be killing the ones in the pots today as well. 

I think this weekend will be a pretty busy one.  I am planning to set up plastic covers for the hoop tunnels and I'll be mulching the beds. I'm still waiting for some plants to complete their seed production but they'll be going soon, too.  Bye summer, hello fall/winter hybrid, crazy weather!