My beautiful, gorgeous tomato bushes are gone. It’s sad really. It makes me wonder if I’m cut out to garden my own veggies. Never mind the neverending, wonderful crop of zucchini that has been filling our table so often that I started sharing many. Never mind the spring onions that are there, abundantly, waiting to become salad. My tomatoes failed and I am a crappy farmer gardener.

In all honestly, I don’t think I can and should blame myself. The only one to blame is the weather. The immense amount of rain, rain and more rain that have graced spoilt our Dutch summer are the cause of my tomato misery.

Last week I posted about how large the tomatoes were, just waiting for a little sun. Last week I had a week off and tended the plants continuously. I removed the dying, rotting leaves that had started to come in. I knew the leaves would likely keep on dying on me, but who knew if the tomatoes would just have enough time to redden up. To ripen, to meet their destiny of salads and sauce.

I spent my weekend at Food Blogger Connect in London. It was a fabulous fabulous time of which I will share more later. Laurens took care of our tomatoes for me. Making sure that once they were ready to be picked, he would do so.

The tomatoes never got there, they just weren’t red and ripe enough yet. And then Monday morning, when I looked, I found that all the tomatoes, green, slightly orange, or almost red, had started to rot themselves.

Some were covered in a fungus. I had feared it already. I had read up on my tomatoes when the rain started, 2 months or so ago, and learned that much rain on the plants can cause a fungus on the plants. If you don’t irradicate it completely and immediately, it will affect the tomatoes. They’ll shrivel and rot.

I must’ve missed the fungus when I cared for my tomatoes last week. I removed everything I saw that looked unhealthy. But the plants were so big that there was a good chance I missed an infected leaf. I’ll never know.

All I know is that on Monday morning I found that it had spread. I couldn’t find a tomato I could still safe. The one that looked okay, once turned around, showed a giant hole where bugs have crawled in.

Last wednesday I bought new canning jars, to fulfil my 11 in 11 canning challenge with tomatoes. I was so confident in my beautiful crop. Now I’m just sad. My beautiful tomatoes are no longer there, all that’s left is a sad, sad garden patch, which has lost all hope, until next year.

Tuesday evening I looked at them again, one last time before goodbye. I pulled out most of the plants, cut them off at the ground and found a couple of green tomatoes that hadn’t gotten infected yet. I vowed that if there was even one worth saving, I’d save it. I want my tomatoes! So now I have a platter full of hard, green tomatoes sitting in front of the window. Hoping to get a glimpse of sun, so they can get red and be roasted into sauce. They won’t be nice enough to eat raw. I know that. That’s what you get when you have to pick them green. But they might still make a decent sauce. Maybe I will still make that 11 in ’11 canning challenge after all.