Tomatoes

This is a wonderful time of year in the garden! The garden is blessing with it's abundance daily. I am dealing with a couple of problems and the ADFF (average day first frost) is quickly approaching. The days are getting shorter and cooler. The evenings have been fairly cool as well. After such a cool, wet summer it is hard to know whether we will have a nice autumn although that is the prediction. I'm not taking any chances in case we get frost earlier than expected.

Vine Ripe Tomatoes

Pictured is yesterday's tomato harvest. There are Sweet Millions (cherry), beefsteak (upper right), Lemon Boy (bottom right) and Heinz 1429 (bottom left). By far my best producers are the Sweet Millions, beefsteak and Heinz 1429. The Sweet 100's have produced very little. The Lemon Boy has once again proved itself to be somewhat problematic, low performers.

Recently the rain has been less resulting in less tomato splitting. By far the cherry tomatoes have been most affected by splitting. Tomato splitting occurs when the tomato roots take up too much water causing the fruit to plump quicker splitting the skin. The next problem is some tomatoes simply falling from the vines. This is primarily affecting the Heinz 1429 tomatoes although it has happened with the cherry tomatoes as well.

Late Blight

Throughout the entire growing season there have been horror stories of late blight. Late blight is a fungal disease that rapidly spreads through tomato plants. This year it has been particularly bad. True to previous experience Lemon Boy was the first to be hit with blight. Late blight is controlled by removing damaged foliage and not composting it. Washing your hands well after working with an affected plant will also help control the spread.

I noticed the first signs of late blight a couple of days ago. At this late stage in the outdoor there is little point getting too stressed about it. I'm removing as much damaged foliage as possible while trying not to knock of immature fruit so there is a bit of a trade off. I also noticed a couple of tomatoes with blight damage so I removed those as well.

Tomato Clippings

At the same time I am taking a lot of clippings of the healthy growth for growing indoors. Pictured is the first grouping of clippings to come indoors. As you can see the foliage is quite healthy. It is important to ensure any foliage used as a clipping is healthy to prevent any disease from spreading through the indoor garden. I cut a clipping and put it into a water filled container then wash my hands and repeat for 4 clippings per container. Then I set the container on the patio well away from the main garden and other clippings for a week. As long as there are no signs of disease, I check for any insects and manually remove them then bring the clippings indoors. The clippings are checked daily for any signs of insects. Indoors I use manual removal combined with a homemade soap spray if necessary. Once roots form the clippings are either planted in soil or left as individual plants in water. I use an organic fertilizer for the plants. As the plants grow the process for rooting clippings is continuously repeated throughout the winter.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
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