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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

I'll tell you how my garden grows. With mildew and blight and dead plants all in a row.

Our poor little garden is a mess. Our zucchini plants were attacked and destroyed by squash bugs. Our cucumbers succumbed to powdery mildew. And now our tomatoes are being overcome by the blight.

The blight! That sounds so old-fashioned!

We didn't mind giving up the zucchini. And we ripped out the cucumbers and recently planted more. But we aren't giving up on our tomatoes as easily. We are fighting the blight with chemicals in the hopes of saving them. (I've never understood all the fuss over organic anyway!)

Last year we had tomatoes into November. November! This year, we'll be lucky if we have tomatoes for one more week. And to add insult to injury, a couple of nights ago as Sarah was eating a bowl of my delicious homemade tomato soup she said, "Ewwww. This doesn't taste like real tomato soup."

And if by "real" she means tasteless Campbell's tomato soup, I suppose she's right. Because for my not real tomato soup I roast the tomatoes with garlic and onions and red peppers before pureeing them with my emulsion hand blender. (Thanks, Aunt Cathy!)

Perhaps one day she will appreciate my tomato soup. But for now, I guess we will stick to Campbell's - it's easier anyway!

9 comments:

Aimee said...

We've got The Blight here as well. Bad season all around for tomatoes in our neck of the woods.

RR Mama said...

I'm in awe that you even had a garden. I like them but other than someone else giving us their veggies, I'm to chicken to try!

rhemashope said...

O.K. I'm just going to admit that I had to go look up the word "blight."

You know, in the Strawberry Shortcake "Sweet Dreams" DVD, she asks that very question 'How does a garden grow?' Know what the answer was? LOVE. Love the blight away, Beth. Just love it away. =)

Denise said...

Poor little garden.

Rebekah said...

I made homemade tomato soup once. it was soooo much tastier than the can stuff. I am going to have to make it more often this winter... with grilled cheese sandwhiches!

tracey.becker1@gmail.com said...

Hey, don't waste the good stuff on someone who doesn't appreciate it, right? I made homemade chicken soup last night, strained out the suspicious "lumps" for my pickiest eater and was met with the "What IS this?" speech. It was NOT, apparently, REAL chicken broth.

Whatever. More for me!

Jaina said...

I'm sorry to hear about your garden. Your tomato soup sounds absolutely scrumptious though!

Jessica Ryan said...

Ugh... I wonder if it's the weather. Have you had bad weather? All the rain has done damage here. Blight has affected tomato plants nationwide. Isn't that amazing? Is it contagious? Like the Swine Flu for tomatoes? We've treated our plants too. I look at it this way, it's antibiotics for the veggies and it will help them get strong and healthy again! ;)

Gretchen said...

I so miss my garden. We moved from the country, where I had at least a dozen tomato plants every year (which allowed me to screw up half of the plants) to now having one pathetic lonely plant in a 5-gallon bucket. This year was not my year for learning how to do pot-gardening. My tomato plant just plain didn't survive, poor guy.