Tomato Agony

Well, I was in a bad mood a couple of days ago, after making my trek out to the tomato garden. Every other day I coat myself with an insect repellant, preferably one with DEET in it (there are mosquitoes in our tomato jungle, and they will eat you alive), and head out to water the veggies. The plants have gotten so big that it takes about a full minute to water each one!

I decided that tomatoes are tougher to grow than roses, and I'm talking about hybrid teas. I wanted to break something.

Three weeks ago we had these gorgeous, healthy, green plants, growing like crazy and full of tomatoes. (We are doing better than last year, thank goodness.)

Then we spotted the hornworm. My brother-in-law said to get after it with the Sevin dust, which I did. He also said we needed to get a spray for the blossom end rot, which had affected a couple of the plants much worse than others. So I dutifully sprayed for that.

Soon after, many of the leaves turned yellow, then brown. Not all of the plants were severely burned, but Purple Haze, with its multiple clusters of tomatoes, lost virtually all its leaves.

Cherokee Purple suffered a severe case of blossom end rot. We only got to taste one, but it was delicious.