Phytophthora infestans!

24 July 2009 — Yesterday when Jenn did a final walk around of the farm, everthing looked healthy and in order. This morning while we were searching through the herbs for marjoram to fill an order, I looked over and commented “those tomatos don’t really look too good, I hope they don’t have the blight…”. By 2 PM we were deep in the carnage of uprooted, black, crinkly-leaved tomato plants, busy trying to remove the diseased plants and in hopes of salvaging those few dubiously healthy plants. Harvesting bucketfuls of green tomatos hoping they would ripen off the vine and we would at least taste fresh tomato once this summer, but fully aware that the buckets will most likely contain molding goo by morning.
Does this scenerio sound vaguely like something you heard in history class? Well Phytophthora infestans is the same (not so) fun-gi which caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1800s. Somehow that knowledge puts things in perspective a bit. I mean, knowing that I won’t eat tomatos this year is sad… but it is NOTHING like watching all my food for the coming winter disapear….
Today we pulled up and burned about half of the field (basically what was visably dying– even during the hour we were working we all agreed the plants were looking worse and worse). We left half a field still standing, although clearly inundated by the spores. They don’t look any worse now than when we left them… we can only hope those plants will somehow shake the disease? There are also a couple dozen plants in the hoop-house, maybe the spores haven’t reached there yet. So maybe we will get a few tomatos yet this year…

25 July 2009 — After researching and talking with area farmers, the conclusion had to be faced that no plant recovers from this disease. Today’s task of pulling up and burning the remaining half of the field was so much worse than yesterday’s, because yesterday the plants had clearly already lost hope and life-force. Today’s plants were mostly still vital and green, trying to grow and ripen up those tomatos. But they all had the blight, and if they didn’t show symptoms yet, they still certainly were covered in spores, and so they all had to go.
We are still holding on (for now) to the hoop-house tomatos and the potatos, hoping they’re far enough from the others to be safe from the wind-born spores. All infected plants, stakes, soil, etc has been burned, all our clothes and shoes have been washed, the digging tools have been bleached… In the mean time Jenn is searching for recipes using baked green tomatos (baking kills the spores) to try to salvage what we can.
I guess if some sort of disaster has to hit us this summer, it is kinda cool it’s on account of a slime-mold…..