As summer gives way to fall, I need to say a sad farewell to my small vegetable garden. It gave its all under very difficult conditions this year. A brilliant spring with gallons of crunchy lettuces and radishes gave way to a miserable summer of flooding rains followed by scorching drought. Midway through August my poor tomatoes gave up the ghost.
I grow heirloom varieties, and normally they’re a bit tougher than your garden-variety hybrids. They hung in there through the floods of late June, and my organic method of planting tomatoes with crushed eggshells helped stave off the blossom end rot I might have expected otherwise in such weather. Then late July and August turned brutally hot. My Lemon Boy tomatoes kept producing despite weeks of temperatures 95 and higher, which is enough to shut down most tomatoes and keep them from setting fruit. But even the Lemon Boys couldn’t keep going through a month with barely a trace of rain. The vines began to shrivel, and the tomatoes got smaller and smaller despite frantic efforts at watering the garden. Then early September brought inch after inch of rain, and the fruits that remained cracked from the inside under the pressure of all that water. My friends who count on me to bring extra bounty for their own kitchens were sadly let down.
Oh well. We gardeners are known for our foolish optimism about next year. And maybe it’s not too late to salvage the fall garden with some late peas and the carrots that are coming along. This year’s short season will certainly make next summer’s tomatoes taste all the sweeter.
