urbantomato: July 2011

Brian Mitolo's shots of the gardens

Thanks to Brian Mitolo for taking these shots of me enjoying being in my community garden plot. and the beauty of the entire garden itself. Learn more about Brian's work here

Farm-tastic!

Thursday was a beautiful day for farming. it was still quite humid, but the cloudy skies provided us with protection from the sun; and beautiful scenery!

so many green tomatoes!! can't wait for them to start turning to a rainbow of tomatoes!

purple cherokees are getting so close to sandwich time

paprika peppers ripening

yellow beans! and weeds!

cucumbers

baby basil

zucchini

black seamans

i love this photo of a purple bean plant flowering, if i could, i might sit in the garden & take a photo every hour as the plant begins producing it's pod. probably a good thing that my garden is not in my backyard!

more green tomatoes. sooo soon & we can start eating them. sooo excited.

This is what tomato hornworms do. jerks! i must have killed 50 huge one's today. notice the million weeds in the background too. oh my.

i love this twisted tomato! it's a stripe cavern. this will probably be the first of 200 pictures i will take of it!

Blossom End Rot

So, one of the problems that you may witness in your tomatoes is blossom end rot. This condition is usually caused by uneven watering or lack of calcium in your soil. You can see a brown and mushy spot where the blossom of the tomato flower would have been.

Sadly, you will most likely have to remove the affected fruit, as it is likely to rot further as the fruit continues to ripen. However, you should be able to fix the problem for future fruits/

First, water your plants on a regular schedule. Try to ensure they are receiving an even level of moisture.

Photo from http://thegoodthing.org

Secondly, there are varying suggestions on how to do it, but you need to get the plant some more calcium. One resource suggests adding eggshells to the top of your soil, seems like a simple way of doing it?

Here are some other sites you can check out:

Veggie Gardening Tips

Blossom End Rot- Cause & Prevention

You Grow Girl forum

Tomato Hornworms

Threat: The Tomato Hornworm

These little guys can do quite a lot of damage in your tomato patch. They are hungry and will eat through the leaves of your plants & take large chunks out of the fruit themselves. Here are some photos of them on the plants, you can see some of the damage they have done (the stems have no leaves on them where they have been eaten)

& Here is a photo of one that I picked off the plant. The best way to deal with hornworms organically is to pick them off the plants as you see them (look carefully, they are very camaflouged, you can see the damage they have done, and droppings easily).

Once you pick them off the plant, you have to decide what is best to do with them. I have always killed them with the scissors that I am using to prune (may sound barbaric, but it is part of being an organic farmer).