The end of September means also the end of the tomato season. Although this September has been warmer than normal, with temperatures constantly over 25°C (77°F), the end of the month still means the end of the tomatoes. Every morning for the past 2 weeks has been bathed in heavy dew and the position of the sun is now well under the forest border, so the garden gets almost no direct heat.

The tomato plants have actually stuck all through September without many sick leaves, but the past week the late blight started spreading rapidly, and this was the sign to harvest all the fruits that were left and to pull the tomato plants out.

My hubby helped me to clean up the beds, so the tomato removal wasn’t a too difficult task this year. There are still plenty of healthy plants, so there was lots of schlepping to the weed pit, but we managed to do it in one afternoon.

I still have lots of green tomatoes. They will have to ripe on the balcony. The ones that don’t ripe will be used in pickled salad, but as I can see, most of them are already changing color and will most likely have time to ripe.

Now that the tomatoes are out, my brassicas will have a month to catch the autumn warmth and compensate for the lack of growth during summer. They have already grown twice in size during the past 14 days and are finally growing as they should.

I’m sure today’s rain will help them grow even better. Although we did get some rain in September, we’re still in a drought period, and we got only 50 liters of rain this month. On a normal occasion, this would be enough, but with the drought that lasted over 3 months, this is barely enough to wet the upper layers of the soil. We should get at least 250 liters during the next 3 months to reach the average amount of yearly rain.  

Now that the tomatoes are out, garden tasks will be basically late harvests and digging. We’re not far away from the winter rest.