How to kill Heirloom Tomatos

I love heirloom tomatoes, I really do. Unfortunately I've had a bit of a black thumb this year when it come to tomatoes :(. I was super excited to try a larger variety of heirloom tomatoes and other heirloom vegetables this year. Last year I had great results with the red tomatoes, but this year I wanted a rainbow garden.
I started the first tomato starts in February. They germinated fairly nicely considering they were leftovers from the previous year. They were growing nicely until the later part of March. They were looking leggy so I put them outside for more sunlight. I remembered to bring them in for a few nights, and then I didn't. The next morning I looked outside and saw them. Completely frozen. I wanted to cry.
The next batch of tomato starts had lots of new varieties that I had never tried before and I was super excited. This time I wouldn't let my poor plants freeze. I was, however, a little worried that they weren't going to germinate very well, so I wanted a way to keep them warmer than room temperature. I had a flash of brilliance, the oven. The oven would keep the little tomato seeds nice and warm, as long as I turned the heat of after a few minutes. Sigh. Yep you know what happened next. I went to do sometime and forgot about the plants in the oven. This was by the way, after my husband had told me that using the oven as a means to warm seeds was NOT a good idea. Smart man, shouda listened to him. When I opened the oven the soil was steaming hot. I debated if I had really killed them. I thought some more. Well I figured that Tomatoes were heat loving plants so maybe the had survived being cooked. Sure enough after awhile a decent amount germinated and began to grow.
As they got bigger I moved them to the kitchen table for a couple of hours to get more sunlight. I did not put them outside because it was still April and snowy. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me that my two year old son might see the start and think, "Oh Goody, Dirt!".
It took him all of five minutes to upend the tray of fragile tomato starts and pull each one out of the soil. *&#*!
For the last and final batch of starts I decided to use a warming mat. Not a single tomato seed germinated. Go Figure. Guess I'll sow some seeds directly in the garden and hope that I'll get some fruit before one of the freak freezes strikes in early September. Wish me luck.

Spring Farming in Utah

February was a typical Utah February. Nice. Warm. Sunny. Perfect for tilling the garden and planting a few cold loving spring plants like lettuce, peas, broccoli, cabbage and spinach.

March was cold and snowy, as is typical, so I rigged a makeshift cold frame out of straw bales, plastic and some three gallon buckets filled with water. It kept the plants alive but they didn't grow much. I was looking forward to spring, which I like to think of starting in April.

This is a picture taken on April 16, 2009.

This was the first time I had to physically remove snow off the cold frame. I was impressed that my plants survived that snow storm.

By the time the Provo's Farmers Market had started on May 1st, the snow was gone and the plants had grown quite a bit. Amazing what a little WARMTH will do for plants.