Downingtown Vegetable Garden: June 10, 2009 Big Weather

There have been lots of thunderstorms rolling through the last week. Yesterday was the most intense. Before work we got some strong winds and some real heavy rain along with some tiny hail stones. It was the first time we've lost power since moving and I was happy that it wasn't out for more than three minutes. After that storm cleared out, there was a second round that rolled through around 3pm. This one came complete with a tornado warning. The funnel was more then 10 miles away, but a coworker's wife snapped this picture of it coming down. Pretty cool!

I have been having a problem the last few days in the garden - and it's not the eggplants this time. One of the plum tomato plants has been looking a little funky. The leaves have been curling and it's size is noticeably smaller than the rest of the tomatoes. Take a look at these two pictures:

I did a little Googling and there are several potential causes, but one of them in particular sticks out as the likely cause. It seems that with lots of water , poor drainage, and severe pruning it can stress the plant severely (from the GardenWeb). If this is the case, a few days to dry things out should help. I did take a major limb off this plant that had several leaves covered with aphids, but I'm not sure if that is considered 'severe' pruning (I debated taking it off, but it was the only part of the plant that had aphids and I didn't think it'd stress the plant this much). I also find it odd that none of the other tomato plants have been affected the same way. I looked back into my photos from the last few weeks and it seems that about ten days ago was the first time that I can notice that this plant is noticeably smaller than the rest. We have received a lot of rain in that time. It still has healthy looking flowers and six or seven green tomatoes that look just fine. I'll post an update on what happens in a few days...

Here's how the rest of the plot is looking...