The party is over for the Tomatoes!

The blight that has been plaguing West Michigan gardens has come to mine. Because of our cool nights and amount of rain this past season (we did not even need to water our yard or garden at all in August) a blight has developed attacking tomato plants in the area. Over night all of my tomato plants died. On Wednesday I spent an hour in the garden cleaning out the dead plants (did you know it just as much, if not more, work to clean out the garden as it is to plant - great exercise - at least that is what I keep telling myself as I struggled to get out of bed this morning...lol). I made sure all of the plant material went into the garden waste container instead into the compost bin so I don't carry it over into the next growing season.

I have to say, I can not complain about how well the tomatoes produced this year. I even picked a bushel on Wednesday as I took the plants down. Most are still green, but will ripen within a few days and I can do one more canning.

What did I lean this gardening season about tomatoes?

1. Tomatoes and peppers don't mix within a raised bed. When I planted the raised bed, it looked like there was plenty of room for the tomatoes and peppers, but the tomatoes have over shadowed the peppers. I have picked a few peppers, but they could have done much better if they would not have been so crowded.

2. Don't go cheap on the tomato cages...I bought the cheapest tomato cages I could find last spring and during the summer the tomato plants bended them right over.

3. The "Pear Tomato" is a cute tomato (it is small, yellow and the shape of a pear) and nice for salads, but it is a very aggressive plant (I even trimmed it several times over the summer) and produces way more than what I wanted for a few summer salads.

4. Good soil leads to great tomatoes. We invested in good gardening soil when we were filling the raised beds this last spring and the proof was in the size of our tomato plants and tomatoes them selves.