My Perennial Tomato Plant

Defying all sense of logical hot summer Florida gardening, the Pruden's Purple heirloom tomato plant started from seed last winter is STILL growing!! With the end of July fast approaching, this tomato plant should be long gone, dead, withered and dried up, but somehow it keeps on growing and producing blooms just to prove a point. I have decided to keep this survivor going as long as possible, even going as far as pruning it to see if it can make into the fall.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the garden we also have a still growing pepper and cotton plants. The buckwheat cover crop has grown, flowered and been chopped down to decompose into the soil. It should provide a nice source of phosphorous and help produce lots of blossoms and fruit for the upcoming fall tomato crop.

The compost bin is starting to fill up, although a bit slower than usual due to the hot dry weather and lack of rapidly growing grass. The bins will be emptied into the garden beginning next month.

Back in the seed starting lab we are underway with more pruden's purple tomatoes and green peppers. They will be going in the ground about mid August for our fall crop. I've always had my best luck with tomatoes by growing them in the fall. Red and green cabbages will be next up in the seed trays and be headed for the ground sometime in September.