Ending and Beginning

Picked another 6 ears of corn today, the last of it, making 30 ears total. Not much, but didn’t plant much — have to count the plants and measure the rows.

A few days ago, I pulled up all the blighted tomato vines, after picking lots of green tomatoes with the intention of letting them ripen. No such luck — they all have the blight fungus inside of them and are all rotting.

Got the ex-tomato area all turned over with a shovel, mixing in 7 gallons of coffee grounds and quite a few grass clippings. Then put another layer of grass clippings on top.

I’m planning to compost all the rotten tomatoes. I can’t get rid of all the blight in the soil, it’s already widespread in our garden, it will be another 21 months before we use the compost, and I don’t know what else to do with them. We’ll be looking to get blight-resistant tomatoes in the future plus adopting some blight-fighting cultural practices (mulching, wider spacing, training the tomatoes on structures to keep them away from the soil).

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