Tomato Plans
October 26, 2011 
As much as I enjoyed growing tomatoes this year, it wasn't without a couple of lessons learned. The biggest one? Blight prevention.
What is blight? I'll let you look up the specifics on your own, but basically, blight is a fungus that makes the leaves on the plants turn spotty, black and dry. It impacts the tomato yield of the plant.
I think I've had blight the last couple of years. Thankfully I still had more tomatoes than I knew what to do with. However, my goal for next year is to grow more healthy plants. Blight spores are transferred from the soil up onto the plant, especially from rainwater splashing from the soil. They are also more easily transferred when the plants are wet, and a person or animal is in among them, transferring spores from one plant to another. Henceforth, this is what I'm going to do next year...
1. Build a raised bed with a tomato trellis, to help the plants grow up vertically and have less contact with the ground.
2. Mulch the ground around the raised bed. This will minimize the splashing from soil to plant.
3. Plant my tomatoes in one long row, rather than several rows. This is for a couple reasons... One is, of course, to minimize plant crowding and blight spread. Another reason is that this will allow for sunlight to better get to all the plants. And the third reason, is that it will be easier to harvest them this way.
Well, I think... I thiiiiiinnnkkk... That might about wrap up my tomato ramblings for the year!
Maybe?
Maybe not.
I may need to whip out some tomato pictures mid-January to brighten all our lives with a burst of color.
And I still need to put a post up on my cooking page for roasted tomato sauce. Oh, yes I do.
And then I will be done talking about tomatoes for the year.
Maybe.
Reader Comments (1)
NEVER!
It's not possible to ever write too much about tomatoes.
Best food on the planet.
I love your colorful pictures. I'm planning on seeing some photos of them in January.
It may be my lifeline of hope in January.
Seriously.
I have raised beds. I wouldn't be without them. It seems to make gardening easier.
It's probably just in my mind, but I can weed a bed then walk away and I feel like I've accomplished something.