Tomatoes - Not a complete disaster

Just when I thougth all was lost a glimmer of hope has glistened on my tomatoes. Of the 3 varieties I have grown this year, the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen. There has only been leaf damage on this plant so far and no fruit loss as yet. Lets hope they stay clear of it and are tasty once ready to eat.

Not to forget the carrots. They are doing really well. Getting bigger with loads left to pick. The second sowing are coming along brilliantly as well.

Tomato blight! Arghhhh

After days of rain and only to shortest of visits to the garden, Thursday was finally a nice enough day to inspect the vegetables. Sadly one of the larger pots is showing signs of the dreaded blight. So far I have found 3 fruits with softer, paler tops which if left would certainly go mouldy. The stalks had shiveled up too.

Im now wondering if some other tomatoes have it as well. These others have developed dark brown tops at the stalk. There is no sign of mould and the stalks look fine. Ive left them on the plant to see what happens.

All thats needed is a good dry spell. Maybe September may bring one.

On closer inspection later, there is far more mould infection than I first thought. Each day I look at the plants and each day there are shrivelled leaves, fruit with soft pale tops and Ive also found that some main stems are dying. Ive just removed one stem were the leaves were wilting. It wasnt due to lack of water to the plant but the stem had completely die half way down. Squeezing that part it was hollow inside. Photo 2 shows it eating away at the stems, creeping nearer to the tomatoes.

Photo 1 shows the soft pale tops to a couple of tomatoes. The stem has died showing a pale growth.

Photo 3 shows the dark brown top. Its hard and dry and only affecting the variety that was supposed to be blight resistant. It may have a different desease.

Photo 4 shows the shivelled leaves. This has occured on all three varieties and can appear overnight.

Beetroot harvest 2008

I dug up the beetroot crop this week. How disappointing it was. There were plenty of beetroots but, with the exception of two, they were all either tiny or long and thin. The two that looked a bit better were barely golf ball size and because they had been in the ground so long I thought it best not to chance eating them.

Since growing this crop of beetroot I have learnt a few things that I will do differently next year. Firstly that when you sow a beetroot seed you are actually sowing a pod containing 4 seeds. Therefore (and secondly) these 4 seeds must be thinned out once they have germinated. I had read about thinning out seeds, for beetroot, carrots etc, but I did not take any notice thinking everything would be fine. I now know how important thinning seedlings is. And thirdly because each pod contains a number of seeds, less seeds needs to be sown.

Peppers in flower

All six of the peper plants are now in flower. Dainty white flowers on short stalks. I imagine they will develop into fruits from these flowers in the same way that tomatoes do. However I have found that some of the stalks have fallen off though. Maybe I have under or over watered them or perhaps this is just a weak point. Going by how slow the tomatoes have grown it will be months before there might be any kind of pepper on theses plants.

We visited my parents at the weekend and came back with two new plants. Hebe cuttings and something else in a pot (cant remember the name). Bringing back cuttings has become a bit of a tradition now and is one of the pleasures of gardening. Sharing plants for free.