I want to cry!!

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

Like Wylie Coyote, if I do not look down,,,,,,,      !

Does the Acme Corporation breed tomatoes? They're sure to be OK

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

[Paulines7]

I want to cry too.   :(  My tomatoes haven't got blight but the foliage went wild when I was away for 2½ weeks and it rained everyday.  All the pinching out I had done beforehand had all gone to pot.  I just have flowers and a few very small green tomatoes on the plants.  This year I decided to grow them all outside because they did better than the greenhouse ones last year.  My peas came to nothing, the new potatoes are huge and eaten by slugs.  Everything has suffered in the garden.  Being an optimist though I try not to dwell on this year's disaster and hope that next year will be all right.   :D

[gordonsveg]

I agree with Wildthing when our eldest son was born in 1963 we were frozen in(somerset & devon) everybody was shouting about a mini ice age coming and we would all be living on 6ft of ice. The experts got that one wrong as well. 8) 8)

[markfield rover]

IN geological terms we are still coming out of the last Ice Age and that's  what I have told my toms.

[cleo]

Things are not too bad here(kiss of death?) but I can sympathise. I get frustrated when weather conditions ruin my plans. When I used to cry/get fighting angry was in my lottie days and all my work was destroyed by mindless prats.

We cannot change the weather-but we should be allowed to box the ears of those who get onto plots/into greenhouses and vandalise them

[redradish]

I'm not entirely sure if it's blight that's causing the leaves on my outdoor tomatoes to go brown and shrivelled, as I'm new to all this and haven't seen blight first hand before. It's mostly affecting my Sub Arctic Plenties - my Ferlines aren't too bad, but I think they're meant to have some blight tolerance, so it does seem to suggest blight to me.

My question is - all my outdoor tomato plants have produced loads of big green tomatoes, and despite the brown scrunchy leaves and the odd beige coloured tomato, most of the fruit are still shiny and green. Are they worth picking for green tomato chutney or something? I'm just trying to get something from my efforts if I can, but don't want to poison myself or end up with pickle that tastes of bad fruit! Has anyone been in a similar situation to this before?

I'm concerned that it might spread to my greenhouse nearby, where I have some Tigerellas and Green Sausage Tomatoes that have been doing well. Trouble is I'm having to keep the greenhouse door open, because things kept turning brown and fluffy and dropping off when the door was kept closed and there was too much humidity. (I'm talking about the plants, not me.) Feels like you can't win either way sometimes! I thought the humidity would have been good, to keep red spider mite at bay. The other problem with keeping the door open is the leaves on my aubergine plants are now covered with greenfly, it looks like some kind of organic braille. So any advice on the sort of damage they might cause and how to deal with them would be greatly appreciated too! The greenfly are only interested in the aubergines at the moment, the tomatoes and chillies seem to be getting away without any problems so far.

[redradish]

Managed to find some useful information about greenfly in previous posts, I realise now I should have used the search function before posting, sorry!

Does anyone know the answer to my other question? I mean, if my outdoor tomatoes have blight but most of the tomatoes just look like normal green tomatoes, can they be picked and used for chutney etc? And is there a high likelihood that the blight will spread to my nearby greenhouse tomatoes now that I'm leaving the door open during the daytimes?

[Robert_Brenchley]

You can certainly use them, but be prompt. Indoors, they develop greyish mould and rot rapidly. But they make wonderful chutney.

[Deb P]

I made the decision today to trash my outdoor toms. I had been nursing them along, picking off the blighted keaves as the succumbed, hoping to get the green toms to ripen. But today, some of the lower fruit were blighted as well, so I picked all the green fruits (only about 3lb sound fruit from 16 plants) and cut them all down (sob!)

My greenhouse toms have a lot more fruit, but are also suffering from blight, although only relatively mildly at the moment.... :-\

Chutney beckons.....

[cleo]

Did I post `kiss of Death`?-I knew I shouldn`t have opened my big gob-blight has appeared on my outdoor toms over the past two days- :'(

[Doris_Pinks]

Mine too Stephan, you are not alone!! :'( :'( :'(

[chrispea27]

Just a note on weather the floods were v bad in 1947 after a proper winter with snow up the side of DD buses? but worse than that was 1905 so these extreme conditions have been happening foe a century at least!

Hope next summers going to be an extreme one Hottttttttt!

I can sympathise with the blight v disheartening

[newbies]

what do you mean "just" slugs? Aren't those pesky molluscs enough?

we've got more to worry about. Last Monday I caught a girl of about 10 trying to steal some shallots from my plot (twice). She must have been sent round to get them. Good to see her Mum is encouraging a healthy diet.I had too pull them all up on the one day I didn't have the car.

On the Wednesday some kids were damaging a plot, one of the out of sight ones. I had to chase them out several times and got a reasonable amount of abuse

the fence has been cut with wire cutters this week

today i see that the same plot has had all their sweetcorn cut down. It's their first year and they've worked so hard

Chester police just now have a period of zero tolerance of anti-social behaviour, so of course all these problems will vanish in a day or two, and the natural order of peace and harmony will return for ever and ever, Amen

Rhubarb Thrasher, our site has had lots of trouble with kids, breaking into sheds just because they can.  We have reported it every time to the police, and now they have so many crime numbers in one area, that they have to round up the kids.  At least something is being done now.

[cambourne7]

the police will not do anything without evidence so take a camera with you and try and get some shots of them doing the damage.

[amphibian]

In my garden, everything that can get blight has been killed by it, 59 varieties of tomato dead, all my spuds. Gone dead and burnt.  :'(

Mildew has got nearly everything else.

There is a glimmer of hope, however. I have one solitary tomato plant, that is doing just fine. It is a mystery volunteer that cropped up in my compost heap and seems to be blight resistant. I will use it for a future breeding project if it holds out.

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

thanks newbies and cambourne. No more trouble yet. The story appears to be they broke into a shed, stole lots of wood, cut down the fence and built a treehouse in the next field, and at the same time pinched a scythe and chopped the sweetcorn down
I visited a private allotment last week - completely enclosed and vandal proof. It looked like something from the Chelsea Flower show, I want to cry.. For those of you who have plots like that, you're so lucky

[cambourne7]

when you say completly enclosed and vandel proof what did they have??

[Eristic]

Machine guns at each corner.

[cambourne7]

naw, that would need planning permission!

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

they have a high fence and a 10 foot gate. Greenhouses, polytunnels, sheds with gas ccokers, automatic watering systems some of them. No birds or animals

i suppose a downside is that if anything does get nicked then you know it's almost certain to be one of the other people there

some really nice plants and fruit, but I did notice that no-one seemed to be growing anything unusual