Nighty night nightshades

This hasn't been the best growing season for nightshades: tomatoes, eggplant, chili peppers, petunias, etc. Both the combination and the sequence of weather seems to be not to their liking. Firstly it was too wet and not warm enough early on, and tomatoes being grown by some of the best gardeners TPP knows got no further. TPP had  his nightshades in containers, so the extra drainage kept them from completely crashing. Nightshades are also susceptable to quite a number of diseases particularly wilts and blights. Those along with mildews got off to a great start during the wet weather of early summer, and now the plants look terrible, their vigor is waning, and they won't last much longer although usually gardening is fine through the end of September around here. In particular it was a bad year for petunias, and the wave type seem to have done particularly poorly. In contrast verbenas that sometimes struggle are doing quite well. Remember that these nightshades are not tough plants, but cultivated softies. Now that the weather is cooler and drier, which requires some watering, plants should be doing well, but they are already too far gone. So for about 5 weeks tomatoes were abundant. There were plenty of eggplant for a month; the plants do show some signs of rebounding. Chili peppers produced well for about 6 weeks and now some varieties are almost leafless, others are recovering and will probably provide a few fruit. The petunias are just shot; wave goodbye. Glad our survival doesn't rely on potatoes this year, although strangely, perhaps because they are harvested earlier, some decent crops are being reported.

Wilting Tomatoes - This could be bad

The kitchen garden was off to a slow, late start this year, but finally beginning to look like something.  But now the tomato plants (a resistant variety!) are showing signs of a wilt, probably verticillium, but need to check leaves for lesions.  First, the one on the end of the row, now the next one in the row.  They'll be pulled, but it may not help at all.  Verticillium is wide spread and the spores can last in the soil for years.  And members of the nightshade family are particularly susceptible, and the only possible action is to do some long-term crop rotation.  However since the primary crops in the summer kitchen garden are tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant plus curcurbits, there are too few options in too little space.  Just in case a couple of late tomatoes, also resistant, were planted in large pots.  This may be the beginning of some upward gardening avoiding the native soil for a few years.  There are times when the combination of animal and fungal pests make small scale gardening a rather disheartening enterprise.  Verticillium wilt could also explain the rapid decline of raspberries (also very susceptable) last year that was blamed on the drought. Two years ago several well established trees here and there around the yard just up and died after a sudden wilting.  Replacements have done well enough, but this renews my worries.  Drat. 

Genomic studies confirm the tomato is a fruit. Duh!

Really?  Genomics confirms that the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable?  No, probably just Gisela's lame attempt at humor.  There are a lot of good reasons for genomic research, comparing one genome to another, but it doesn't seem that this science writer touched on any of them. Genomic research wasn't needed to identify the domestic tomato's closest wild ancestor; yes, it confirmed it, but it was already known, well known.  And yes, tomato is pretty close to potato too, but that was already so well known that tomato has been transferred back into the genus Solanum, discarding its colorful genus Lycopersicon ("edible wolf peach", maybe distinguishing it from other toxic red-fruited nightshades), a triumph for Linnaeus who put it there in the first place.  So what did we learn from this fluffy bit of science news?  Not much.