Aren’t hobbies supposed to be relaxing or something? I’m kinda stressed out about these tomatoes. The wilt is gaining ground. Tomatoes are ripening, but I want them to go faster so they ripen before the wilt kills the plants. The blondkopfchen cherry tomatoes are ripening – they are so delicious, just as good as sun gold (but open-pollinated). But about that pollination – I’ve only got one of these plants. But I’ve never seen so many blossoms on one tomato plant. If each one had produced a tomato, there would be enough from this one plant to feed the whole neighborhood. But they didn’t set fruit, due to disease, or the bees, or whatever. There are not so many. The black krims are getting some color on them, but I’m ready for ripe tomatoes. The venerable Kathy Clancy from the BUG garden says to try epsom salts for wilt, so I did. I sprinkled some on the tomatoes and also on my sad fava beans. The interweb doesn’t seem too encouraging about epsom salts helping with wilt, though. Apparently it helps with blossom end rot, which is not what I’ve got. Not this year, anyway. But apparently epsom salts don’t hurt and are also useful for soothing baths and constipation.
So yeah the thing killing the fava beans looks to probably be the same wilt, and it looks like beans in the BUG garden have also got mosaic virus. My swedish brown beans show signs of both, but they are healthy and vigorous anyway, and making lots of beans, hooray! Other people’s tomatoes in the BUG garden do look like they’re coming down with the wilt as well, although not as bad as mine. Now I think the difference is probably the temperature (it’s hot up on the roof) and the varieties. They are probably growing more disease resistant tomatoes than me, is all.
It’s hot. hot.
