Blight-free Shovel Tomatoes

I love tomatoes. Nothing beats the feel of holding a firm vine ripe tomato in hand...except the taste. For decades now I have been able to satisfy that love by planting between 25 and 30 mostly heirloom tomatoes.

This past summer my plants, loaded with green fruits, struggled through the cool, moist weather catching enough sun to produce a few mid-season ripe fruits. If the rains stopped and if the summer warmed up, it looked like I'd have a fair crop.

Then late season blight hit. Large brown spots began appearing first on the leaves, the stems and then the green tomatoes. I picked all the sound green tomatoes, washed them in a vinegar water solution, and laid them on newspaper in the cold room hoping to ripen them. After a week or so I noticed brown spots developing on some of the green fruits and decided to process the remainder into a green tomato relish.

There's always next year. Hopefully extreme cold weather will kill off the fungus and my tomatoes will flourish under the hot prairie sun. Meantime I have created my own shovel blight free tomatoes. Check them out:

               Tomato Shovel

               6 1/2" x 22 1/2" x 12"

               Clay, glaze

               2008

               Sliced Tomato Shovel

               6 1/2" x 22 1/2" x 12"

               Clay, glaze

               2008