Midnight Snacking

After forty straight days and nights of rain, the garden is drenched. Floating. So many of my tomatoes needed just one more month of sun and they would have been perfect. Instead, they are mushy, splitting and rotting right on the vine.

At three o'clock this morning, I awoke with a start. Rats. For some odd reason, I panicked at the thought of rats out in the garden in the middle of the night snacking on my soggy tomatoes. I even got a flashlight and peered out the window. Didn't see anything but rain. Rats scare me. Allowing them to snack is an invitation to move into my house. Come on in where it's nice and warm. I'll have more treats OR you can eat my walls. Shiver. Rats can burn down a house by gnawing on the electrical wiring. Shiver.

I know with fruit trees it's important to keep the windfalls off the ground to keep the rats away, but for some reason I spaced on the tomatoes. I kept thinking I could wait until the weather got colder and less wet to do fall garden clean up. I was up at 3:30am ready to work as soon as I could see into the yard.

One full wheelbarrow

 

Thousands of wasted tomatoes. Literally, thousands. I cleaned out both tomato beds and hauled four wheelbarrows full of vines and fruit.

Looks like more dirt than tomato, but everything was so muddy.

 

Plus two more buckets of rotten or still-green tomatoes. Some I had to search in the herbs and bushes as they had fallen and rolled. Others I had to dig in the very wet dirt to find them.

When the tomato plants were cleaned out and gone, I started on the squash vines. My last little zucchini had nibble marks. I don't know if rats like zucchini. Then the rain got so heavy I had to quit.

This is the part where I wondered why I grew tomatoes...so much work. I think in my area it would be better to grow things in a green house.