The Decimated Crops of New England

When I went outside with Max this morning, I decided to take a look at the tomato plants. My mother had told me that the plants had gotten even worse than when I had last checked on them, but I was absolutely shocked at the condition they were in. The weather here in New England has been destroying our crops. The rain has been so constant and the humidity so high, that instead of lush green vegetation, the vegetables are covered with weird growths and marks. This may be a really boring post to a lot of you, but I was extremely upset to see what our weather had done to our plants. So I ran back in the house and grabbed my camera. Even the baby tomatoes up near the top were going bad. I am obsessed with native tomatoes! I have been looking forward ALL year to these tomatoes! Last year we had so many ripe at the same time, we had to give away some, and often! This year I was able to save about 4 that were still mostly green, by putting them in a paper bag until they were slightly red, and then putting them in the window sill. Take a look at what New England weather has done to our tomatoes!!

Do you notice how you can see the rails of my deck in this next picture? Last year the plants were so thick and lush and tall, that the tomato plants went all the way up the deck! It was crazy awesome! Now look at how little life there is in these 10 plants. Yeah that pitiful thin, dead mess is about 10 tomato plants. Last year we enjoyed over 100 amazing tomatoes at least. And from less plants. Can you even tell there are plants in this picture?

And if you clicked on the pic to make it bigger and are thinking, Wendy I can SEE red tomatoes, you are right, but let me share something with you. Here is the top half of one of those red tomatoes:

And here is the bottom half of that SAME tomato:

I know it will probably not work out, but I picked off as many green tomatoes as I could that were still in good shape and put them in paper bags, in hopes, PLEASE, that they may start turning reddish and can can turn red in the window sill. I HATE what this summer has done to our vegetables. How are your gardens faring in your ends of the country or world?