A Tale of Tomatoes: From Seed to Salsa in 6+ Months

The day after Thanksgiving I was having kitchen withdrawal symptoms so I decided to spend part of Black Friday making and canning green tomato salsa. The day-long effort was actually the culmination of a six-month experiment in gardening inefficiency. And like a high-school chemistry experiment, I'm writing up the project from memory, about a half-hour before the lab is due.

Tomatoes having the reputation for being fast growers and prolific producers.  Not over a hot Texas summer. Apparently the nighttime temperatures have to get below 75 in order for fruit to set.  Austin seems to have the right combination of heat + humidity to prevent this from happening.  Maybe it's just the type of tomatoes I'm trying to grow.  Perhaps I can try others.  But it's been 2 years of trying and I've gotten bumpkin.

Last year I got disgusted looking at my scrawly tomato plants about September and ripped them out. Then someone told me that if I leave the plants in until it gets cool again (end of September/beginning of October), I'll have tons of tomatoes.  So that what I did this year.

Here's the bounty of tomatoes, all 6.3 pounds of themf