Cold Snap

Tomatoes have frequently volunteered in my garden, which might be why I didn’t bother planting any earlier this year. When none emerged, however, I made a half-hearted attempt at sneaking in a late crop, planting Komohana grape tomatoes from the University of Hawaii Seed Lab and Sun Gold cherry tomatoes from Kitazawa. I figured the plants would hit maturity just as the weather turned cold, leaving little likelihood I might actually harvest anything, but having seen December tomatoes in the garden before, I thought maybe I’d get lucky.

The Komohana never really took off, but one Sun Gold plant reached a decent size and started to flower. It produced a single tomato that I watched for weeks, wondering if it would survive the declining temperatures. Finally, last week, a couple days after I took a picture of this brave little guy, the weather took a rough turn, with rain and near-freezing nights. The plant died, its lone fruit dropping to the ground. I ate it, but the flavor was flat and unsweet.

My frequent choice to plant seeds at odd times of year comes from a perpetual eagerness to witness the emergence of seedlings combined with a lack of thoughtful, long-term planning. I rationalize these impulsive and ill-advised choices by telling myself that the increasingly unpredictable weather might buck expected trends and end up giving my seeds what they need. In our swiftly changing climate, who’s to say that a given December won’t stay warm enough to support a few final tomatoes?

Well, this December decided not to be so generous. In addition to killing the tomato plant, it may have also struck a fatal blow to my newly germinated Korean Cosmos, which withered following last week’s cold snap. Interestingly, the weather didn’t bother a scattering of Jeolla Do large leaf mustard seeds that found their way into the same dirt and may end up taking over the pot.

The temperature dip had no effect on the Manoa lettuce either, and the seedlings have steadily kept growing. Even with multiple squirrel attacks on the more recent plantings of those seeds, I’ve managed a 70 percent germination rate. They are a cool-season vegetable, but given their Hawaiian origins, I will be curious to see how they fair this winter on the much cooler mainland.

Finally, I was pleased to see a Tokinashi daikon peek through from a recent sowing. These radishes can thrive in any season, hence their name — toki, or 時, means time, and nashi, or 無, means nothing. These timeless wonders should theoretically be ready to go whenever, and as such, fit the bill nicely for my impulsive seed-sowing habit.

Sun Gold, 11-29-22

Korean Cosmos, 12-6-22

Manoa lettuce, 12-6-22

Tokinashi, 12-6-22