The End of Blossom End Rot

Well in the last three days Naomi and I have harvested about a half dozen of her aunt's family heirloom tomatoes. Their flirtation with blossom end rot has ended hopefully due to our application of bone meal and some calcium water solution. There are several more tomatoes with that promising orangish hue. It appears that my worries of no tomatoes were just a bit over blown. I will take some of the bigger ones and harvest it for its seeds so that we can plant more next year. This variety appears to be a bit like a roma but much larger.

Unfortunately not all tomato stories are end so well. Our local CSA's tomato plants developed late blight. For any who do not know this is the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine, which ended with approximately 1.5 million people dieing of starvation. Many other farms have had this disease attack their crops as well. In the New England states many farms have had to destroy entire fields of tomatoes. Luckily our CSA has only had to get rid of 600 of their 4000 tomato plants. This cool wet summer has not been beneficial to the tomato crops and I can only hope for hot weather for the rest of August.

Washington Post Article on Late Blight and Tomatoes