new organic gardener

hi,
I have about a gazillion questions, answer what you can.thankyou..a little history here;we have a small farm and my husband started an organic garden due to severe food allergies to the stuff in the store, it's about 1/3 an acre. I managed the livestock and turning the compost on our farm and he did the veggies and fed the compost.
he passed away a few weeks ago and I am so clueless as to what to do next. we live at 2200 ft elev in the high desert our night temps are steady at about 36 and day is in the 80's at ground level. our garden is in sunken beds. there is broccoli coming up in the cold frame that is about 2 in high when do I transplant them and what is the best way? the jeruseleum artichokes are now all brown and I am not sure when to trim them off as well as how long can the roots stay in the ground?
an order came the other day of blood meal,bone meal,dolomite,and perilite; I researched on the computer but it seems these all do the same thing. any suggestions on when and where to use them?
he had an experiment going, I still have tomatoes ,eggplants, and peppers producing, the peppers are wilty looking no matter how much or little water I put on them, is this normal? the tomatoes are green and there is just hundreds of them, I have constructed tarps to put about 2 ft above them to protect them from the frost, however when the hard freeze comes in about a week is a floating row cover better than a tarp? I also have a gopher who wiped out my herb garden! grrrr..he even sprung the traps I set for him, any ideas on how to get rid of him before he gets my tomatoes?
also should I go ahead and harvest the green tomatoes so I don't lose them in the hard freeze coming? we had one night in october that was 28 deg for several hours and killed half of the garden, I was totally unprepared for it, as I had been spending my days at the hospital. during that time I forgot to water some stuff and a bunch of fruit is split in two now, is this water stress?

Wow, sounds like you've had a lot to deal with lately. My condolences on your recent loss.

I'll answer what I can. On the bone meal, blood meal, dolomite (lime), and perlite, they all do different things.

Bone meal would generally be added for calcium, blood meal for nitrogen, dolomitic lime (dolomite) for perhaps calcium or to change the Ph balance of your soil. Perlite could be used to lighten up the soil if it is heavy (for drainage), but most use it in container mixes and/or to lighten up a seed starting mix.

How much to add of any of these depends on your soil composition - easy to overdo it with blood meal (too much N can be bad), possible to overdo it I suppose with either bone meal or dolomite. In determining how much of any of these you need to add, a soil test might be helpful. Hard to say what the perlite was intended for, but I don't see someone adding it to the large gardening areas you've mentioned for amendment. I tend to think it was intended for containers, as part of a seed starting mix, or maybe to add to some raised beds if you have any of those??

Tarp vs. row cover for protection, and protecting tomato plants, picking green ones, etc. - well, this is sort of a judgement call. Duration of cold matters, along with the actual temp. If I just get the odd night here and there in the fall that is a mild freeze, I will pick everything beforehand that has made it to the first breaker stage (evidenced by being at mature size for the variety, fruit has gone a light green, and may have a white "star" at the bottom if you look carefully in daylight). Small stuff (but close to expected size) that I think is not to that point will be left on the plant and protected with some sort of covering.

Really small tomatoes will be plucked off the plants so that they can put their energy into ripening the larger ones that actually have a chance of making it to maturity. When covering, especially if the cover is plastic or rigid, and you are expecting more than the most mild freeze (30-32), it is usually best not to have the cover touch the plants too much.

Hope this helps answer at least some of your questions.

Suze, has covered about everything I can can except transplanting the broccoli. I don't know your climate, but it appears that you can winter garden. Broccoli transplants best when it has several true leaves ( about 4 inch plants). Just lift out of the cold frame with a small garden trowel, set in the permanent garden at about the same depth using that same gardening trowel. Spacing should be about 18 inches apart each way. I f planting in rows space the rows about 3 ft apart to allow room to move through for harvest.

As Suse stated, the Perlite is used as a soil conditioner, and would be used mostly in cold frames, starting trays, or containers.
http://www.howtogoorganic.com/index.php?page=arizona
http://www.geocities.com/athens/ithaca/1853/organic.html

I'm so sorry to hear of your loss! Your husband would be proud, though, that you are working so hard to keep the garden going.

My area's climate is much different from yours, and I'm a beginner, too. But I've been reading a lot about gardening for the past few months, so I'll chime in whenever I see a question I know the answer to. :o)

There's a wealth of information on this site, so click around when you have a chance and you're likely to find what you need. You can also post a picture of a specific problem - whether it be a troubled plant or a destructive insect - in the appropriate forum and someone is likely to come by with advice. People here are very helpful.

The vegetables forums seem to be pretty quiet now - I guess most of us have cold weather now and don't have much growing. So don't get discouraged if you don't get a response right away in some forums. Maybe you could try the Southwest Gardening forum, since people there are especially familiar with your climate?

You seem to have a lot on your plate, and it could be easy to become overwhelmed. The best advice I can give on that is to focus on two or three gardening issues that are most important to you, and do the best you can with the rest. And don't forget to take care of yourself. Like plants, we people can take only so much stress, so keep moving and keep busy, but make sure you rest and pamper yourself when you need to as well.