I started my tomatoes indoors many MONTHS ago with tremendous loving care and great hopes. They are being taken down by Early Blight (Alternaria solani) and its possible I might lose all 60 plants. 30 had already set out beautiful blossoms, bees were buzzing, plants were growing like crazy and then, SPLASH, New England became a temperate rain forest with near constant cold monsoon like rain for more than a month.
Those were perfect conditions for early blight. We have had sun the past few days and the soil s beginning to dry for the first time in MANY weeks. By the looks of my tomatoes, especially the few hybrid specials I had out there for the kids (mega-monster sized Zacs), they will not be able to shake the disease.
Needless to say, I am not a happy gardener right now. The entire garden has been set back at least a month, not good when you have so little time to garden in the first place.
I am so sorry!!! My tomatoes look good so far but near neighbors have blight and apparently it is going after the potaoes as well. I just pulled my early turnips and got less tha 3 cups of mashed turnips from the whole plot. I am going to replant but I have no idea what the virus that got them is. They were also hit by some type of boring beetle. How ironic that climate change would hit the smale scale gardener. I always assumed it would be the big guys to go down first.
Kathy: I grew these huge turnips one year then found them eaten through by worms :-(. I have not had the heart to grow them again.
Yeah climate change is especially hard on us small growers because we can afford moderating green houses to help with the huge amount of rain and long cold springs.
Its going to be hard for a long time to come. Recognizing this now and adopting an experimentalist attitude will help. I think farmers in the NE will have to plant for several zones each year and then hope that there will be some happy medium somewhere in there. We need to observe whats working year to year so that we are realistic about what we can grow.
For me, I think its possible that growing tomatoes without some sort of covering overhead to cut out some of this torrential rainfall will make tomatoes impractical.
make any sense?
Sorry about your tomatoes, but thanks for sharing the photos. I’ll know what I’m looking for.
I’m so sorry to hear about your tomatoes! As always, I have been having a bit of a hard time with mind too, and it seems like others are as well.
I hope that you were able to rescue at least some of them!
Heather: Sure thing – hope that you do NOT have to deal with this!
Laurel: Yeah, the tomatoes and potatoes have crashed big time here in the Northeast… just cant catch a break – torrential rainfall here all this AM, some yeterday, day before. Just never seems to quit
Hi Nika,
I have been missing your posts. How is the blight going? I fear I might hasve just found my first spot. I have a lot of beautiful fruit. Losing it would be such a tragedy, especially as it is unlikely I will find good, local organic fruit in the volume I need at a price I can afford if the blight spreads.
Kathy,
Been having ISP problems and then all this blight business – I had put a huge amount of work into those tomatoes since like mid feb or so.. so its been blocking me a bit.
Am trying to get something written right now but the kids are in a bad mood which means its hard to compose anything at all!
cabin fever, an illness of some sort, and teething all = general misery here!
[…] I am having trouble with my red tomatoes. I had to tear out two plants because the tomatoes were orange for about 3 weeks now and not turning red. The entire plants looked like they were dying, I think they have blight. That is a vegetable disease that attacks the plant and you have to remove it or it will spread to all of your tomatoes, so we’ll see. I hope that is the end of that but honestly my red tomatoes aren’t doing too well. Here is some info on blight: Humble Gardener on Blight […]