Tomatoes and Lessons in Humility; This Fungus is Bigger Than all of Us

It's been a while since the last post and much has happened in the interim. The main thing of note is that most of the tomato plants are dying a painful death of Late Blight, the very same vicious fungus that caused the potato famine in Ireland. Late blight has now been reported in every county in Massachusetts so if you have tomato plants, chances are, they are dying a painful death before your very eyes. Amidst the resulting heartburn and hand-wringing, there are a few things to be learned.

I noticed that the blight hit Smallholdings about three weeks later than it did Sienna Farms, which had plant dates within a week of my own. It could be luck or a result of differing weather conditions between Somerville and west of the city but it could also be the fruits of some preventative measures. I sprayed with baking soda water at a concentration of 1 Tablespoon of soda to one gallon of water on a bi-monthly basis and in the off-weeks I sprayed with bactillus subtillus. From what I understand, fungi prefer a slightly acidic environment so if you can raise the pH slightly you can prevent them from taking hold. Bactillus subtillus is a bacteria which, from what very little I understand, loves to chow down on fungus. In all likelihood it's very much more complex than this... but you get the picture.

After the blight took hold I continued with the bacteria spray and replaced the baking soda with strong chamomile tea. The plants are still dying and I am still sad about it but I'm picking a lot of perfect or near perfect fruit despite the yellow and wilted foliage. When the blight first hit, the fruits were completely unaffected but as the disease takes its course, some plants are producing fruits that rot before they ripen or split deeply from stem to blossom end. There is nothing worse than watching a large heirloom tomato swell to upwards of grapefruit proportions over several weeks only to be left with a mucilaginous pouch of rot hanging off the vine. The plants that produced profoundly damaged fruits had to be culled. Ripping out a plant still heavy with fruit is a hard thing to make yourself do but if the fruit is inedible, the plant is just fuel for the disease not to mention a hideous eyesore. Once the plant starts producing rot pouches instead of tomatoes, admit defeat, take it as a lesson in humility and rip the sucker out. Having reluctantly torn out the most diseased plants and continued the spraying regimen, the plants are still dying but they're doing it slowly enough that I'm stuffing my face with tomatoes in the meantime. If you are being overrun by the blight, try picking the tomatoes when they are almost ripe. The last stage of ripening seems to be the turning point.

It is important to remember not to compost diseased plant carcasses. It will only cause you more heartbreak next year; as you will spread the fungus all over your garden when you use the compost in the spring. It sounds crazy, but throw clippings from diseased plants in the trash.

Gardening is not like any other craft. You can't expect results in precise proportion to the amount of planning you did or the care with which you tended; there are millions of other factors at play. Some of the factors at play are so complex that you may not even know they're in the game, but they are and they may be winning. Sometimes the best we can do is mitigate. Sure, there are products intended for the killing of fungus but some of them will kill us too and others will decimate the microbial populations in our soil and make next year's plants more vulnerable, leading to a long term dependence on products that reverse the effects of the last products. Think spider-to-catch-the-fly. Think this-is -your-garden-on-drugs. Think maybe we should stick with organic, be brave and admit we've been bested by nature and give it another try next year... and don't forget to be thankful that you weren't counting on that crop of potatoes as your breakfast lunch and dinner for the next four months.