We have been neglecting our garden the last few weeks. It’s been so crazy around that we just haven’t been back there to check on things…and as a result the rest of our tomato plants (a fabulous Big Rainbow variety with single tomatoes as big as both palms of my hands together) have gotten late blight and I no longer have to wonder what we’re going to do with all the tomatoes. Next year we will forget about growing the tomato plants in the garden and greenhouse. Instead we’re going to try growing them in the courtyard near our guesthouse. They will be covered by the roof here (so no rain from above), get sun in the morning (helps their leaves dry quickly if they get dew–which they shouldn’t) and we’ll be able to keep a close watch on them. We won’t be able to grow quite as many plants there as we had in our garden, but honestly we had far too many growing in our garden anyway and couldn’t even find the time to trim and train them. I actually hate the trimming portion because really dislike taking anything off our plants when they are growing so well; but this year as taught me that it is absolutely necessary to trim and train tomatoes plants if you want to keep them healthy.
What is late blight, you ask? The world’s most devastating disease for tomato and potato plants. The fungus comes on quickly, can stay in the soil for many years and will give you virtually no warning before it wipes out your whole crop. We lost an entire bed of tomato plants in less than a day. It thrives in rainy, overcast weather where the leaves of the plants can’t fully dry out. And we have a lot of days like that around here, even though this was still a fantastic summer.
I threw away 3 large garbage sacks full of tomato plants which nearly brought me to tears. You want to bag them and burn them if possible (or just dispose of in regular trash pickup) because adding them to your own compost is certain to bring the fungus back to your yard in years to come. The plants were just full of fruit–but even if you let it ripen it will usually turn brown and gross because the fungus is there even when you can’t see it yet. We had one bed of Big Rainbow plants in another bed and they appeared to mostly be good. I drastically cut back a couple plants that had a few branches touching plants in the other bed and were turning brown already. And then I hoped and prayed that we’d get something from these plants that was edible. I also sprayed the plants on a fairly regular basis with organic fungicide which I mixed up myself. Although I love going the organic route, I do still tend to be skeptical about how effective it will be until I have really tried it myself.
The mixture worked great until a few weeks ago when we just started flaking out on our garden because it started getting cooler. I went back there yesterday to see if any of the tomatoes were ready to be harvested, and found total tomato devastation once again. It’s really no wonder, the weather has been ideal for blight: raining, then sunny. Temps fluctuating all over the place. I guess we should just be thankful we got any tomatoes off the plants at all. And I have to say they were DELICIOUS! I did manage to save a few seeds from them too. But more on that later.
How’s your garden doing? Are you planting anything for the fall? We’ve got some brussel sprouts forming which I’m really excited about and a few eggplants (our only ones of the season) that we’re still waiting on. Looks like we’ll get a couple more cucumbers and zucchini before the season is done too. But we’ve only planted Pok Choi, Lamb’s lettuce (feldsalat), a mixed salad for picking and some winter endive. I don’t have broccoli or cauliflower seeds, otherwise I might try that. And we planted a lot of our carrots earlier this year even though we didn’t get many of them to grow. Better luck with everything next year, I guess.
We here in the polar south are just getting started with our gardens. Already we are enjoying overwintering broccoli and spring onions and the lettuce is growing as are potatoes. We have yet to start our tomatoes though we are a bit late.
I find it odd that you talk about ‘going the organic route’ as if it were a path off the norm. Organic is nothing more than what was the norm for 10’s of thousands, maybe hundreds or millions of years ( depending on what you count ). Frankly I’m skeptical of the ‘other’ route. Nobody has to prove that organic works, it’s just following what nature does. ( But in fact, organic methods have been proven to have higher and heathier yields than the pesticide/artificial fertilizer, chemical ‘route’ – big duh!). Give it time, you may be dealing with blowback from previously corrupt soil practices. Take care of the soil ( and everything else ) and it will take care of you.
Steve
You’re so right, Steve. I think it’s an issue of being raised in a generation where we’ve always had chemicals thrown at us for our gardens. All of our neighbors seem to heavily rely on chemicals to keep their gardens healthy and it’s never seemed to cross their minds that they could be using homemade tonics on their gardens instead. Many of them have never even considered saving their own seeds. It’s criminal really. So I guess that’s why I always feel like I’m breaking from the norm by going organic–even though it’s often the simplest way to go about it.
Good on ya then for being the pioneer in your neighborhood.
Unfortunately too many of us grew up with too much Neil Sperry and not enough Howard Garrett!
You go girl. Don’t let anyone tell you that organic doesn’t work.
xxxxBlight. I live in a corner of england that also suffers from the dreaded blight mostly brought on by having so many potato,s grown by the local farmers. However the past two years has seen the fields covered with oil seed rape grown for diesel and petrol conversion. I now hope the weather turns dry and warmer, I,m on my second sowing of tom,s as I lost the first to frost in spite of them being in the greenhouse, this new lot are being pampered in heated propagators and should go out soon.
I wish you the best of luck with yours and hope to cover mine if blight comes knocking, yours george