Late summer chores

I've never ripped out tomato plants in August, so this is a first.  The bacterial spot/blight that got into the plants during the rainy cool weather in early summer had gone too far.  I didn't want the plants to serve as incubators of nasty microbes.  A picture of the two cages of slicing tomatoes shows almost no foliage left.  I did manage to pick a few slicers before taking them down.

The Super San Marzano tomatoes developed a lot more foliage before they got infected, now most of their leaves are brown and they were also pulled up.  Since the weather improved all of the tomato plants started new shoots which show no sign of disease, but those shoots start at the top of the cages and are too spindly to produce any amount of fruit.  Before taking down the tomatoes and their cages I harvested about 3 1/2 pounds of tomatoes, mostly sauce tomatoes.  The beds look empty now, just peppers and sick looking eggplant.

I sowed Berseem clover in the former brassica bed about 6 weeks ago.  Most of it died. 

So in the former onion/garlic bed I sowed buckwheat as a cover crop.  It's doing better than the clover.

Crabgrass had taken over the squash bed.  I was hoping the squash would shade out the weeds, but the Teksukabotu plants have succumbed to a fungus and lost most of their foliage, giving the weeds an opening.

Well I got in their and ripped out as much as I could.  At least I can see the squash now.  The vines growing on the trellis are relatively free of fungus.  That shows the benefits of air exposure in preventing fungal infestations.

At least the okra are doing well, and the beans are producing again.  This is Millionaire okra, from Johnny's.