OMG, Tom -- remind me, how many plants did you have? Next year I am planting my entire garden to tomatoes, I am SO jealous!!!!

I have 27 plants. But I don't think I'm going to do that many again! Even if someone gives me extra plants! I'm hoping I have canned enough so I don't have to can any tomatoes next year. I may have apples to can next year as well, as this year was a bust!

Karen the soup is easy to make, It is supposed to have 1 1/2 cups of real butter melted. ( I used a 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup of olive oil.) 1/4 Cup of finely chopped onion sauted in the butter until tender. Then add 2 1/4 cups of flour, 1/4 cup of salt, ( I used only half of that salt) 1 teaspoon pepper, and stir to make a rue. Then I added 8 Quarts of tomato juice and blended it with a hand blender until smooth. I let that simmer for a while until it's thickend, and then process it. It filled 8 quart jars, and I had a bowl extra for lunch!

Wow, that sounds really wonderful. I will have to try a small batch.

At last the cherry tomatoes are coming on. I don't know what sort they are but they are prolific and sweet and grow so well. They were given to me when I first came to the island.

I am so looking forward to them this year. Some of the tomato prices here have been criminal.

First tomatoes of your season!

Yesterday we ate our first tomato of the fall. It was a Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum 'Amy's Sugar Gem')

Ha! Your second tomato season is just starting and my tomato plants here are almost ready to be pulled out for the year. No more till next spring. I sure would love two seasons per year of tomatoes.

Even though we've had a low temp of 28 Degrees, my tomato plants are still alive. I have so many tomatoes that will go to waste. I have been giving away as many as I can, but there's way too many. The frost killed the egg plants and pepper plants. Not the pablano for some reason.

I am always envious when people start talking about their fall season of crops!

It's definitely a benefit of living down here in the south, but remember that our summers can be brutal. Not much happens during the dead of summer. So we basically get a very long spring and a very long fall and not much growing in mid summer or mid winter.

It would be a huge learning curve to move from the north to gardening in the south, and vice versa... we still haven't had a freeze and have been bringing tomatoes inside to ripen (really, really late this year even for us!).

Dave, do you have problems where you are with your tomato plants getting "blighted" ? I'm putting that in quotes, because I'm not at all sure actual blight is what I have, maybe verticillium wilt I think (although I haven't been ambitious enough to figure it out for sure). At any rate, somewhere around mid summer we always get some cool, rainy weather and that's when it starts -- the leaves at the bottom of the plant start turning brown and brittle and it works its way on up. Just curious...

Our tomatoes do that at the end of their life cycle. They start drying off from the bottom up like you described. I think it's their natural habit to do this.

Well, that would be pretty funny if all this time I thought my plants were getting diseased and it's just natural end-of-life ! I think in my case it actually is an organism of some sort causing it, though -- especially because this year I had one tomato plant in a separate area of the garden where I hadn't planted them before, and it was (still is, actually) relatively untouched; the other 12 plants are in varying degrees of demise ... but in any event they are facing sure death from freezing before long!

Different cultivars begin to die off at different times. I have some that are still pretty green, and others that are farther along. I think blight kills most of the plant really fast, and sometimes before many tomatoes are fully developed.

Tom, do you have a problem with your plants dying from this "unnatural death" ?? My understanding is that actual "blight," both early and late types, is air borne -- I can't remember what website it was, but a few years back I found a reporting of how far north blight was showing up, moving up from the south, at a given date... On the other hand, fusarium and verticillium wilt stay in the soil and apparently infect the plants when rainfall (or watering) splashes the soil up onto the plants. I think you use the plastic ground covering around your plants -- right (or am I thinking of someone else) ? So maybe you don't have the problem, or at least not as significant. (or, maybe you just don't have the problem where you are) Although I really hate using plastic on the ground in my garden, I may just give it a try next year to see if there's any difference. Mostly I've just been trying to encourage my plants to grow as fast as possible early in the season -- the taller the plants are, the more likely they seem to be to survive long enough to ripen their tomatoes.

I think that verticillium enters the roots and remains in the soil for many years. It affects many plants.....maples are harmed by it and I feel like I have lost several Japanese Maples because of it. I have also abandoned some beds where I have planted tomatoes before after several years of success the tomato plants started to fail. I think it is the worst tomato disease here. Now I'm going out to pick a few tomatoes and will have a Bacon and Tomato for supper

I do use plastic mulch, and I trim the lower leaves off the plants, and rotate crops so that the area where tomatoes are grown is used once in every 3 years. I used to solarize half of my garden space and plant on the other half and change off every year, but my iris habits have invaded a lot of my space and now I'm not able to do that.

The blight you speak of has entered our state, and many have had problems with it. So far, knock on wood, I have been lucky and haven't been affected by it.

Paul, that BLT sounds better then my potato soup!

BLT's were on the menu here tonight as well -- nice leaf lettuce still to be had, fresh ripe tomatoes... such a short season!!

But Tom, potato soup doesn't sound bad, either

It was pretty good, I had to use up some of the potatoes that I nicked with the fork yesterday when I dug them. Sounded good on a cool night after spending the day splitting wood.

Here are the tomatoes that I picked today. The sandwich was delicious. I have lots of tomatoes in various stages of ripening and hope the weather holds a little longer.


We like potato chowder. I dice some bacon and brown, then some chopped onions. Add Half and Half and sometimes a can or two of cream of potato soup. Then diced Yukon Gold Potatoes. Finish with some niblets corns and check seasoning. I may make some tomorrow.