And greetings from the nation as we shake the hands of time

[sovay]

Our tomatoes have potato blight?

What is with this year?

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

What is with this year?

I wish I knew, as it's been sucky in so many different ways for so many different people.

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

It's the result of monoculture.

Large scale farming operations tend to focus on one (supposedly profitable) crop at the expense of preserving a natural ecosystem on the land-base. It weakens the environment's natural immunity to low-level blights such as the one described. (The same thing hit the large strawberry farms in BC this year ...) Add poor soil preservation practices and gobs of chemical fertilizers and you get the Monsanto effect ...

On our farm, we're reaching toward what we hope will be a sustainable future for our food supply (and, by extension, the planet). You might enjoy my wife's blog: http://nanocosm.livejournal.com/

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

What is with/i> this year?

Climate-change-related El Niño. Possibly with a dash of Wrath Of God.

PS: Is it tomatoes in your backyard specifically, or the Mass. tomato crop in general?

[zdenka]

Oh, no. :-(

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I heard about this on the news. Craaaazy.

[carik.livejournal.com]

It's been a bad year for tomatoes (http://www.motherearthnews.com/Grow-It/Milestone-Herbicide-Contamination-Creates-Dangerous-Toxic-Compost.aspx) all over, hasn't it... Ugh.

[eredien]

Now I feel bad; I think my tomatoes have more tomatoes on them than the pictured tomatoes from that organic farmer in Lincoln.

That being said, last year at this time we had more tomatoes than we could eat, and this year we've had...one. We might have two this week if the one on the vine ripens up. We have many tiny tomatoes, but I don't think they're gonna make it.

My peas are also sad; they're withering and rotting by turns. I also had a lot of aphids and was going to mailorder ladybugs to eat them, but it's been so wet and/or blisteringly hot that I didn't think they'd live.

I'm really sad; I was looking forward to canning some really good tomato sauce with the delicious heirloom tomato plants I'd got from the farmers' market.

[tuppshar-press.livejournal.com]

I'm blaming space ninjas. Or trolls. They make as much sense as anything.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

It's set off a bit of a tomato panic here. Farmers are picking their fruits early and selling them green for fear that they'll be blighted before they ripen. Hence tonight's fried green tomatoes.

Oh, and . . .

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

. . . the article is slightly inaccurate about the potato thing. Late blight comes in two separate strains: one generally affects potatoes, the other tomatoes. Though the fungus can jump species, it's not really correct to say that the tomatoes have potato blight.