It’s the end of the growing season; everything is simply pooping out.
Harvest your fruits and let the poor thing pass on. ;)
Another one of my endless problems this season is my Peach tree. She set a ton of fruit, but it’s all ROTTING on the tree before it even ripens! Fungal issues from too much early rain is what I’ve been able to come up with. Frustrating - because I LOVES me a good ‘Contender’ Peach!
I even picked a few that were close to ripe, to ripen on the kitchen counter. Same thing - went straight to rot. :(
I’ve had to say it all season long - so GLAD I know where the Piggly Wiggly is! We won’t starve, at least! ;)
Mom & I were talking about peaches today - it’s one on my favorite fruits, if not the favorite. Seeing your mention of peaches reminded me to check the orchard we like & they should have peaches now: Sweet-N-Up & Summerfest varities. Time for a road trip!
Farmers Market was great - lots of local produce. The stand with the best looking tomatoes (other items looked great, too) had a line of probably 10 people waiting to check out. When we got there, we saw people with flowers I knew were from my niece’s booth. While we were there, she sold out. It’s a really nice market & there were lots of people attending. I wish it were closer than an hour away.
Put up my first batch of jalapeños for pepper jelly this afternoon: cleaned, chopped into chunks & in a quart canning jar with 2 cups of vinegar, kept in the fridge. Some more peppers are beginning to show color changes so maybe batch #2 won’t be far off.
Oh, Golly! I’m with you on the peaches! I wonder how the orchards in Southern Illinois are doing, given all S.I.’s rains until a couple weeks ago. They have some magnificently great peaches and apples in those hills, in even “ok” years.
We have a couple young plum trees that spung up from stones from two old plum trees that died a few years ago, and one of them this year produced a few nice fruits for the 1st time. BUT, I had to pick them a bit early, or, same problem, they started rotting on the tree. Even sitting in the kitchen, then it’s maybe one day between “not ripe yet” and going bad... Still, caught on the right day — Yum!!
As for the Cherry Falls tomato plant, that’s what I was wondering — maybe they are sort of a one and done variety. (Or in our case, it produced for a month, and then said - “Crap, it’s early August in Zone 7A, and we are supposed to be an “early” variety. I’m outta here...”)
Well, hopefully the fruits still on the plant ripen ok. There are 20 or so very green fruits still on that plant... Others of these Cherry Falls plants made it to the garden later, as I was holding off putting them in the ground because of our ridiculously soggy soils. Hopefully they’ll still do ok. I find I like these: They are sort of an oversize cherry tomato with medium thickness skin and great taste.
I’m a little spoiled, I guess, because often I’m able to keep at least some fruits coming from our tomato plants, esp. some of the cherry and grape tomato varieties, until our 1st hard frost (if I cover the plants.) (Usually mid October at worst.) This was my 1st try with Cherry Falls, however.
As an aside, I have a VERY vigorous volunteer tomato plant coming up in the “chicken guano & used bedding pile”. It even flowering now. Since we feed our chickens tomato scraps, it could be from almost anything (variety). Maybe it will be a Golden Jubilee. Hahaha.
The “Golden Jubilee” plants I bought from Menards are producing fruits almost indistinguishable from the Cherry Falls - not at all like last years Golden Jubilees in size, color, or paucity of seeds. I’m really beginning to think “Bonnies” screwed up somehow. But, it’s ok, sort of: they still taste good! Maybe these “Golden Jubilees” will keep producing a bit longer. :-)
Anyway, thanks for the quick reply! I won’t waste any of my copper based fungicide on this plant, now...