Ketchup!

After weeks of lamenting about the poor quality of tomatoes due to blossom end rot, I finally figured out the trick to better, if not cured, tomatoes: just stop watering the plants.  You wouldn't think this to be the smartest idea considering the drought, but I didn't know what else to do.  I choose to think of it as either I stop watering the tomato plants, or I start ripping them out of the ground, and I've prided myself for making it this far into the season without mowing over anything or ripping anything out of the garden.  Amazingly enough, the tomatoes were much better once I stopped paying attention to them. Like, at all.  I've gone out to the garden a couple of times a week to pick tomatoes and I have a much smaller ratio of end-rot tomatoes to perfect tomatoes.  So last week I made twelve pints of ketchup and today I made nine pints.  You might ask why I would make so much ketchup and I will tell it's for two reasons: 1. What if I don't have another tomato crop until 2014? I will need all these pints, 2. Art uses a large amount of ketchup be it on a hamburger, goulash, or spaghetti (he uses ketchup instead of pasta sauce. Weird, I know).

I'm sure I will have more tomatoes and that I will make more ketchup. I actually do intend on taking out a couple of the plants- the ones on the end that don't get a lot of sunlight and produce small tomatoes that are entirely afflicted with blossom end rot.  So it doesn't count because I'm not ripping them out from frustration, just their total lack of productivity.