I've been waiting and waiting for tomatoes. We have Early Girls and romas, and so far we've harvested only a couple of each. We do seem to have quite a few green ones now. The situation is the same with the pumpkins, squash, and melons.

None of my food growing efforts have been very successful, so I figured I was doing something wrong. An article by Leslie Allen in the paper this morning, however, gave me great news: I can blame the weather. Who knew the June rains probably degraded the pollen? Who knew hot temperatures slow fruit development?

It's a great article, so I hope you read the whole thing yourself. I learned tomatoes have a "breaker" stage when they "form a thin layer of cells that seals the fruit from the stem." Once they've done that, they will no longer receive nutrients from the plant and don't have to stay on it. However, the sugars still develop as long as they are in the sun (whether still on the plant or on a windowsill). That's why we can pick the ones that are half ripe if we're expecting a freeze.