Late Blight
June 26. 85 degrees. Sun/rain/storms. Very humid.
In my last post, I mentioned that going away at any time during the summer is a challenge. While away for the last two weeks, both Steve/Julia and Kris/Tom told me that the tomatoes looked dry and spotted - odd, since it’s been raining nonstop in what’s turned out to be one of the wettest summers on record (June was the wettest and second coldest).
But we’ll get to that - my first view of the garden, after our trip, was of the yellow beans…beautiful! There’s a lot available in the garden now - yellow beans, italian wide beans, dinosaur and red river kale, rainbow chard, beets, basil, zucchini, greens, and herbs galore…we need our CSA members to come up and pick, for your refrigerators! Make arrangements with a friend, talk amongst yourselves…but come up and share. The next two months are the heart of our season.
A special thanks goes out to Tom and Kris, who watched the farm for the last two weeks and really put in some major time in the garden.
Now, back to the tomatoes (and potatoes, unfortunately). Apparently, this summer’s a perfect storm of humidity, cool weather, and unwelcome visitors (in the form of diseased tomato plants delivered to home gardeners around the northeast by Home Depot, Walmart, etc.), which has created the first late blight since I started gardening in New York. In all likelihood, it may be the last time I see it as well, since this summer’s weather has been so off. And naturally, it all started pretty much right when we left, and two weeks later, our full crop of tomatoes and potatoes has been affected. As you can see from the picture, the tomatoes are not big and leafy as they should be - clearly, they’re stressed from too much rain, and as you know from reading this blog, stress provides an environment for problems.
The usual solution, if caught early enough, is to pull out and bag (and discard) any affected plants. Since we’re already past that point (the entire crop would have to be removed), today I sprayed with Kocide (copper sulfate), an organic fungicide. I’ll be doing this every couple days, attempting to keep the tops of the plants, which still look good, from looking like the bottom of the plants. We need help with this - all hands on deck. If any of you can come up during the week, I’d like to go plant by plant and remove the diseased portions of the plants and put them in a bag - this will make a big difference.
Fortunately, the other parts of the garden are generally responding quite well to all the water, although I’m a bit worried about our squash down the road - fusarium wilt is the next thing I’ll be looking for. As you can see, the squash, melon, cucumber, and zucchini plants are maturing nicely.
Corn is coming along well. Our stand-by, Delectable, is doing best.
This year we tried a couple others (Old Fashioned and Montauk) - the juries still out on how those varieties will do.
One thing that’s really responded this year to all the rain is our blueberries - they look the best they’ve ever looked. Strawberries and grapes are also getting a strong start (both new this year), as you can see in this picture.
Although we had to pull about a third of our blackberry plants this year, the remaining two-thirds look very strong. I think we’ll have a decent crop of blackberries this year. It’s also been a great year for wild berries, with all the rain. Black raspberries abound wild on the farm, and although they’re gone now they certainly made for good eating.
Raspberries will be off the hook this year. I have never seen the plants so tall - they’re over my head (normally they’re at chest level), so they’re a good two feet higher than they normally are. There are a few strays ready now, but the main crop won’t hit until late August, and then watch out.
The rest of the garden is looking pretty solid, at this point, and
other than work in the tomatoes and potatoes - and weeding, of course - coming up to the garden now means as much picking as it does working. You can see potatoes, brussels sprouts, carrots, chard/kale, basil, and at the top edge of this photo, garlic, Garlic needs to be dug in the next week or so - a fun job, not too hard - and then laid out on tables to dry.
See you up here!
