You Say Tomato, I Say Nah

The tomato crop was thoroughly disappointing this year. July was downright chilly and the plants sat in the cool ground pouting.  Some of my cold weather tomatoes did fine, but most of the large-fruited cultivars made no progress. It finally warmed up in August, but then we didn’t get any rain for many weeks further stressing the plants. Just when most of the fruit finally started to ripen, late blight arrived and spread like wildfire. I didn’t want to take any chances, so when about half of my plants showed signs of blight,  I yanked out all 20 of them. Everyone I know that grows tomatoes lost most or all of their plants to late blight this summer.

I tried many new heirloom cultivars this year, but I never got a chance to taste test or compare them. I did pluck one ‘Kellogg’s Breakfast’ tomato (pictured above) from a vine before destroying the plant. It weighed over 3 pounds. Unfortunately, I set it on my porch to ripen and forgot about it until it had started to rot so I never got to taste that one either.

I’m not sure if I’m going to bother with tomatoes next summer. Late blight is still a threat. It’s awfully heartbreaking to tend to plants all those months and then have destroy them before even reaping the rewards. I may just take a year off.

Mmm hmmm, we’ll just see how strong I can be when all those shiny seed catalogs arrive in a month or so.