Well, surprisingly, all the tomato plants recovered. This was due to my practice of NOT pinching off the suckers. I have learned in the past, from previous unseasonably late frosts, that the suckers are your insurance. So, although the early June frost killed all the leaves and branches of several of my tomato plants, the roots obviously survived, and the plants recovered by upgrading the suckers to full branch status. Several of the plants are now flowering.
The strawberry plants were in planters raised about 1 metre off the ground. The plants survived the frost, but a lot of the flower buds were damaged. We had a lot of aborted flowers and berries that stayed tiny and green. But a recent hot spell has perked them up, and they are flowering and setting fruit. We have picked six ripe strawberries! Woo-hoo! Party!! There are more berries to come, and the plants look much healthier than last year. Speaking of poop (the title of the thread), I dug in a bad of sheep manure in the spring, and it has made a big difference to the health of the plants.
We bought three grafted seedlings of Gravenstein apples, a local variety that is great for both cooking and eating. Two of the grafts took and the plants had quite a lot of leaves. So, last week, we planted the seedlings in the ground, on a day that was not too hot, not too cold, with a chance of showers. The next morning, every single leaf was gone!!
Rabbits, we figured. There's not much we can do except (1) hope the rootstock is healthy enough to try leafing out again in spite of transplant shock or (2) buy new grafts and start again. In the hopes of trying option 1, I made some wire rabbit-proof cages to put around them.
Half the tomatoes are toast. Another frost forecast for tonight. I had them covered with straw on Sunday night, and I have covered them again tonight. That's about all I can do.
