Tomatoes Again?

So Monday I wrote about my harvests which were mostly tomatoes (3/4 of the harvest by weight). Tuesday I wrote about the tomato festival. So today I should write about something else, but nope. I'm giving you yet more tomatoes.

The bad news first. Late blight has just about defoliated my plants. The photo above is what my Sungolds looked like a week ago. Below is what they look like now. I have plenty of fruit. The fruit seems pretty resistant to the blight. A few stems have had it and needed to be cut off, but mostly I've just cut off all of the leaves that have shown any signs. I thought our hot weather would have helped a bit, but nope. It was hot and humid weather. Every night we have had heavy dews and no wind. So the water just sits on the leaves. The temps at night are in the 70s which is perfect blight weather. Sigh.

The above photo is of my worse off Market Miracle tomato. Look at all the beautiful fruit. They are turning red slowly, but there are just a few healthy leaves left. I suppose in a way I should count myself lucky. I first found the late blight in the garden in July about three weeks ago (or June ages ago on my potatoes). It didn't spread as fast as it could have. I've been really good about keeping any sign of it picked off of the plants. I go over them pretty thoroughly, but the thick Sungolds were my downfall. I couldn't find all the diseased leaves in the mass of foliage. Once I missed a bit then it spread and took over.

The Market Miracle really produces well for me. I think if there weren't late light I would get about 30-50lbs. Their issue is that they like to drop their fruit easily. While picking off leaves these five tomatoes fell off. I hope the green ones ripen. Sometimes in the morning I'll go out and a partially ripe one will be on the ground.

That hasn't been all that my tomatoes have had to deal with. This year has been hornworm central. I've had better tomatoes (baring the blight of course) than in any year in the past and the hornworms have liked the feast. I saw signs of them about a week ago but couldn't find them in the mass of foliage. Now that the foliage has mostly been stripped off, they are much easier to find. I killed two that weren't parasitized by the braconid wasp. I've never had the wasps in my garden before. I've seen other gardeners post photos about them but never saw them before. I think I found my hornworms too quickly in the past. If I wait the wasps can get them. I left all the worms with cocoons on the plants.

But life hasn't been all bad on the tomato front. I've been picking 2-3 lbs of fruit a day this week. We just can't keep up with all the cherry tomatoes. They cover my counter top.

I do try to eat them all. I have fresh salsa and cherry tomato varient of caprese salad everyday. I think a large caprese salad is in the works for a friend's BBQ this weekend. I eat the tomatoes as I pass through the kitchen, but sill I can't keep up. I've resorted to making tomato sauce out of them. Unlike Granny I've been freezing my sauce, not canning it. I have a lot of freezer space. Today some cooked salsa is in the works and that too will be frozen. I was going to can these but Poor Richard's Almanac had a warning that late blight can lower tha acidity of tomatoes so I'll just freeze it all to be safe.