I've got blight

Despite my best efforts to grow tomatoes (my previous troubles this spring are noted here), I've never had such a terrible time than while living in Connecticut. I removed three plants tonight from the back grow bed that are showing signs of blight- the leaves were continually wilting for the past week despite extra waterings (I thought it was the extreme heat we're having, even though other plants weren't having a problem) and straw bedding I put down as a mulch to help conserve moisture. After appealing on Facebook ("Is anyone else using an umbrella to shade their tomatoes from the 90 degree plus heat?"), friends advised me to pull the plants since it looked like blight.

See the droopy leaves?

So tonight, that's what I did. I hauled them off to the trash can since it's important not to compost plants with signs of blight. In this case, I noticed brown discoloration along the stem of one plant. (I found some useful information from UCONN about blight here. And I was directed to this site by a friend, since I do have black walnut trees behind my home.) Since all seemed to be showing symptoms, they all went, even though I didn't seen brown spots on the other two.

I'm hoping it does not spread to the remaining two tomatoes in that plot, or to the grow bags adjacent to the plot. (I moved one across the driveway because a few leaves looked suspicious, but I believe I'm just paranoid at this point.)

How depressing.

Oh, and in other news, I am battling Japanese beetles successfully- they seem to be lessening now; perhaps they have heard of the dreaded shake and drop into dish detergent trick I am fairly good at now.  And I have moles in the back yard - a first this year that I'm not too happy about. My father-in-law showed me how to set a mouse trap and cover it with a flower pot so the mole might get into it (yes, I'm not too happy about being driven to this extreme) but I had to abandon that idea when I saw one of the squirrels trying to anxiously find it's way under the pot to get to the peanut butter. Oye! Abandon that idea! (No one was maimed or injured in this event.)