I have yet to resort to making a castor bean stew to end all my travails!
this 'thing' is a melon, that, if it reaches maturity before first frost, will stun me!
antique blueberry/cranberry rake...don't use it on my bushes but am sometimes tempted to speed up the process.
one day picking
blighty refuse to be bagged
Yes, we've been hit with the plague and it's not pretty. I hold at least some scant hope of a bit of a harvest but the longer I wait to pull entire plants and bag them the more the spores spread, especially with the humidity we are experiencing. The tomatoes themselves are secondary to my fears of what may lurk in my soil for ever after so I research and hope the cold of winter and a less seasonally insane summer next year will take care of the problem.
How did the funk get here? Clearly my bad. I grew 90+% of my tomatoes from seed here but did buy a few heirloom varieties from small, local nurseries where I was assured the plants were grown on site. But I work in a nursery and we, along with all the others buy in ornamental plants from other states and I know that some of trucks that delivered to us also delivered to box stores so the epidemic spread like wildfire. Of course I, along with all other growers, would have loved to have known earlier but Pandora's box cannot now be closed. Argggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
I do have some tomato plants that haven't been hit because they are some distance from the main growing area. My left overs, default plants...Snort!
(Randi takes a cleansing breath).
However crappily most of my efforts have been this year there is one thing that remains carefree and abundant. The highbush blueberries here are over 30 years old and produce happily for us as well as the birds! I've been living on them for a couple weeks now and I begin to take on a slightly bluish tinge. I'll be freezing most and making some sort of jammy jelly stuff as well.
