Bidding Farewell to the 2018 Tomato Crop

When temperatures are hotter than 85-90 degrees during the day and 75 degrees at night, tomatoes will stop setting fruit.  Since we've surpassed those milestones, the tomato crop of 2018 has come to a close.  This doesn't mean the plants themselves stop growing.  To the contrary.  The plants that once were trellised neat and orderly, have become a jumbled mass of itchy vines, buzzing stink bugs, and reminds me of a jungle.

Each day I've gotten on my hands and knees and crawled underneath the canopy of tomato vines to harvest tomatoes, but the actual harvest has dwindled to almost nothing.

Even though there are a few tomatoes that continue to ripen, they are few and far between and the quality of them is suspect.  The stink bugs have done a real number on them and most have soft spots on them that make them impossible to store for more than a day before they start to go bad.  Sweet potato vines that grew up volunteer from last year's crop have started to vine up on the tomato trellises.

Knowing the crop was done, on Saturday Russ and I assembled a wagon, a machete and some clippers and got busy.  It was a hot, humid, and rigorous task, but we ultimately prevailed over the vines and removed the entire tomato crop and trellis system.  The garden is open now and looks so strange after having foliage covering these five and a half rows for months now.

This healthy Beauregard Sweet potato will now thrive with its competition removed.  Its vines are a little trampled from Russ and I walking on them while we were removing the tomatoes, but it won't take long for them to heal up and spread out all over the rows once occupied by tomatoes.



Here is a Golden Wonder heirloom variety sweet potato that came up on its own.  Although small, it will spread out in no time.

The ground doesn't stay fallow for long.  We rotate crops and even rows within the garden, but as soon as one crop ends, we follow up with another shortly.  All in all it was a fantastic year for tomatoes and we put up a lot of tomatoes in the pantry.  So much so that I'll probably drastically scale back my plans for a fall tomato crop.  Farewell 2018 tomato crop.  Only 6 months before we plant the 2019 crop.  Tick tock....