Not to gloat

I almost hate to report this – because it might seem egotistical and could cause our luck to turn – but our vegetable garden is beginning to produce tomatoes. Through dumb luck and maybe a few decent practices learned over time, we have avoided the late blight that has hit so many tomatoes around the country.

We are getting a lot of Sweet Million cherry tomatoes. I don't know why we went away from Sweet Million a few years ago, but it is my favorite of the cherry tomatoes. Good flavor, doesn't split and ripens early. What more could you want. Siletz and First Prize are producing a few full-size tomatoes.

I think part of the reason the tomatoes were spared is that I had them under plastic hoop houses until after the Fourth of July, perhaps keeping some of the diseases away. Then I removed a lot of the lower branches. I staked the tomatoes. And about 10 days ago when I spoke to Bruce Watt, a University of Maine plant disease specialist, for last Sunday's column about the fungus attacking maples, he said he was about to spray his tomatoes with a copper based fungicide.

I had some of that in my basement, so I carefully read the directions and used the fungicide on our tomatoes and potatoes. I had used the  copper earlier when a fungus was attacking some newly planted lilacs. The fungicide is approved for use on organic gardens, but it did have an evil aroma. I might have used Serenade, another organic fungicide, but I want to use up what I have before we purchase something new.

Anyway a couple of the garden blogs I read regularly, gardenrant.com and awaytogarden.com have complained about tomato crop failure and I have heard from other gardeners about the deather of their tomatoes. Maybe I should stand guard on ours.

Work in the garden continues. I have taken down most of the pea fences. It was a middling year for peas, but we had a good time eating them up to early August.

We have had good carrots – using a new method involving removing all the rocks and adding compost _ and are beginning to get string beans, although no one in the family really likes them. We  have potatoes that I am digging as quickly as we can eat them, and are getting enough summer squash and cucumbers. The raspberries were bountiful but have gone by, and the highbush blueberries are just coming in. The leeks and onions look good and are just pulling what we need when we need them.

It is almost like we are living off the land. But except for sweet corn, which we don't grow, we aren't buying much for fruits and vegetables right now.

Peak production time in a surprisingly successful year, despite bad weather. I just knocked on wood.