As I walked towards the tomato plots this morning, I was rather concerned that I would arrive to find that all of the plants had melted into themselves during the weekend, due to Late Blight. I was pleasantly surprised to see that only 3 plants had truly succumbed to the disease and that the rest of the plot was holding its own against their disease. After a weekend of heavy rain and cold, humid conditions, I would have been surprised to not find that the disease had progressed; but alas, it is only a matter time. After a full plot inspection I determined that roughly 30% of all the plant matter in both plots was affected.

I have to remark on the persistence of a majority of the tomato varieties. I am constantly reminded that the weather has left a lot to be desired, and through dismal weather and imperfect conditions, the tomatoes are producing large quantities of fruit. I harvest roughly 115lbs from both plots today and of that, 95lbs were perfectly marketable. I have tomatoes piling up to the ceiling  in my home, waiting for their trial and I am constantly fighting off mold and fruit flies from devouring the supply. I took an inventory of the fruit that I have, and determined that I have harvested marketable fruit from 11 of the 12 varieties and the one that hasn’t yielded any tomatoes has struggled the most of all varieties, through this season. I have one more harvest until my first tasting trial, and I am hoping that the plants hold out for at least one more harvest, if not two. I have plenty of tomatoes to do one tasting trial but I am hoping to do three over the next threes-four weeks. My concern is that I will not be able to have each variety represented at all 3 tastings, but I will make do with I have.

200+ lbs of toms

It feels as though the project is coming to a close. The tomato plants are withering away and the tastings are getting nearer and nearer. With this shift comes my preparation for condensing the pages and pages of notes and thoughts that I have gathered over the last 4 months. It feels a bit daunting to try and imagine a nice straight trajectory of the research that I have conducted. I have followed some many different threads of knowledge and science that I am a little intimidated by all of my notes and readings.

I am able to put all of this into perspective by looking at the research from the tomatoes point of view, from its genesis to its senescence. Although I spent hours researching fungal diseases, hours on common pests, hours on tomato life cycles, etc. I can focus on what pertains to the individual variety that I am writing about and forget about the rest. This is my next goal in the project; to put my thoughts into a manageable form that I can easily express to others.