I hear you, Nancyjane. Not a great tomato season here this year either. We just pulled our last tomato plantâ¦a Sungold. Sad to see them go.

I have no idea why it was such a bad year. We didn't have drought here, so that couldn't be our reason. We had a very cloudy spring last year and not a good tomato season. This yearâ¦I have no idea.

Oh wellâ¦there's always next year! :-)

Yep! Now that I'm retired, I'm going into heavy duty composting! I'm going to contact a neighbor who I've heard has a pretty large rabbit operation, start mowing my neighbors' neglected, but chemical free lawn and I'm going from house to house with my leaf grinder! I'll bag leaves to use at a later date.
I've set up a composter on 2 beds so far (to save my back in the spring, hopefully can just remove the bins and rake it out and til it in)
It is just SOOOOO depressing to go to the store and BUY tomatoes! We have plenty of farmers markets, but they are getting quite expensive! Nancy

Hi Nancy, that's nice that you're retired. Exciting to have more time to garden. :-)

What a great idea about the rabbit manure and making use of your neighbor's leaves and grass clippings. I bet they're happy to have you mow their lawn and take their leaves. lol I used to get more leaves from our neighbor's but I haven't in awhile. I should really start asking before they put their leaves out.

I think your idea about setting up your compost piles on the beds so you don't have to move a pile in the spring is brilliant! I was all set to build a new compost bin this spring and I changed my mind and decided it was less work to compost in my raised beds too. I don't have access to any animal manures, so I grew a cover crop in the beds instead. I even surrounded my tomato plants in one bed, with cover crop. I'm almost finished working that into the beds. I cut it all down with scissors and into smaller pieces, then dug a trench down the middle of the bed and buried that in it. Then I use the sides of the beds to buy kitchen scraps until the ground freezes. And I top all that with ground up leaves and grass clippings and cut up plant debris. I'm crossing my fingers that it will all be broken down by spring.

Right now, I think we've had our fill of tomatoes and I'm ready to focus on other things to eat for the winter. It's just such a LONG wait until we have another garden tomato. *sigh*

:-)

Sorry to hear that Nancy! Did they get off to a slow start? Mine did. What part of CA are you in?

Here in the edge of the Sierra foothills near Sacramento i still have sweet 100s, black cherries, and northern ruby paste tomatoes to pick. I have a very hot southern exposure, so they struggled thru the heat waves, but set a ton of fruit at the beginning of fall. In fact, my peppers are covered with many little ones. I may try pruning and covering some of them to see if they overwinter.

Oy i hope the drought ends. I watered the lawn only monthly for the sake of tge trees in it, and saved scrap water indoors to use on the veggies, though i did need the hose too. Just 3 4x4 boxes and a few barrels and big pots.

bdot I'm in Sonoma Co, about 2 hrs west of you.
I planted on April 15th as I always do and had fine weather for growing after that.
The only thing that was not optimal was that I was in Hawaii the last week of May and the first week of June (well it was optimal for ME!) and my non-gardener daughter might have been impatient with the watering, but everything looked healthy when I got home.
Who knows???? Nancy

My cherry tomatoes grew wild this year and put on a lot of berries. But all the large ones are disappointing. Not sure why, but I did not fertilize them, and they are in the same bed the 3rd year.

Next year, I'm going to move them to a different bed. And to fertilize them more. I'll also try different varieties. I want more meaty, not watery.