Although I love living in Bellevue, I do miss good tomatoes.  You know? The tender-savory-yet-sweet, juicy kind? Here, I can only find tomatoes that are mealy, hard, and dry, no matter what variety or where I buy them — even our local farmer’s market tomatoes seem flat to me.

So, with the hope of a good tomato growing in the backyard, the greenhouse investment seemed quite logical!  Then, insert the first growing season with the greenhouse (2017), when I didn’t realize I needed to manually-pollinate the tomatoes since they are growing inside a greenhouse, all protected from my amazing bees, or even the wind to naturally pollinate … …. … right! Ok.

That first year with the greenhouse, our tomato yield was something like 3 tomatoes, making the cost of each tomato about $600, not including the cost of the water! Say it with me: No ROI for the greenhouse in year 1.

Fast forward to this year (2018), the tomatoes were growing along happily with regular watering from the new timered – drip irrigation, and with regular the manual pollination, we had plenty of fruit coming in. I could not wait to have a simple tomato sandwich, or a tasty bowl of homemade tomato-basil soup… … …

Then one day in early August I woke up to a sad sight: yellowing leaves on some plants, and brown spots on others.

 

Everything I read seemed to point to blight or septoria. As a novice, I really am not qualified to diagnose tomato diseases but it seemed like the treatment is similar for either  disease. Neither the organic nor chemical treatments sounded appealing, and being so late in the season meant I couldn’t start again.  My tomato bliss was starting to escape… oh no!

Rather than misdiagnosing and going down a chemical treatment path, I decided to treat the tomatoes like I would treat myself if I had a cold. In other words, I wanted to try some “vitamins” first before treating with antibiotics.

So, I came upon a little concoction that I’m now convinced is the tomato version of “chicken soup for the soul.”  Just a blend of crushed eggshells and used coffee grinds. Poked holes around the base of each plant and added about 3 T per plant. Then waited.

Here are my plants 1 month later. The leaves are so green and dense, and the fruit is so healthy.

I’m already thinking about next year. There are a lot of opinions about growing nightshades with other nightshades (or not) in the same place (or not). But, one thing I am going to do for sure — my tomatoes will take their regular dose of “vitamin C.”

Oh, and with this year’s harvest as it relates to ROI for the greenhouse: each tomato would have been about $26 (per tomato). I estimate now that the ROI for my little greenhouse is about 4 years to break even. Just sayin’ 🙂