Rotten Tomatoes

This week the focus is tomatoes since they have been acting WEIRD lately. When we went to the garden on Monday/Tuesdayish (We didn't finish harvesting on Monday), the cherry tomatoes were perfectly fine BUT the other tomatoes were all basically rotten. (*note: when harvesting over the course of two days, don't put tomatoes on the bench. We don't know why but they started getting squishy and left tomato puddles on the bench.) This is strange since these tomatoes looked to be normal (and not yet ripe) last week. Were they actually ripe then and started rotting since we didn't harvest them? Is it bugs? Or a quirky fungus? Maybe its maybelline? After some research, Nicole and I came to the conclusion that it is MOST LIKELY (still a guess) a combination of Early Blight and a fungus called Anthracnose.

Early Blight affects the leaves, stem, and actual tomato itself of tomato plants. It starts off as dark spots on the leaves which later turn yellow and die. Since the leaves of the plant are dead, the fruit gets affected by sun. It can be helped by removing any affected plants which will be helpful to remember for next year. Early Blight is helped along by wet weather and with how wacky our weather has been lately...

Anthracnose mainly affects the tomato itself and causes it to rot. Small, round, sunken spots appear which then grow larger as time goes on. It can take hold on spots caused by Early Blight and is helped by wet weather. Also if overripe tomatoes come in contact with wet soil, then its chances of getting the fungus increases immensely. To help treat Anthracnose, it is suggested to only water the base of the plant NOT the leaves, remove up to 12 inches of the bottom leaves (so they don't touch soil), and copper sprays.

This is all guess work regarding what is afflicting the tomatoes but hopefully we are correct in at least some regards. I kind of felt like a person trying to self-diagnose themselves reading about all the different diseases a tomato plant could possibly get. It might be a bit late to start now to help these tomatoes, but hopefully in the future we'll be more vigilant and catch it before it occurs.