A is for Apple, B is for Blight

Like many northeast growers this year, my tomatoes and potatoes got hit with Late Blight. It's fairly devastating---fast and furious, I didn't even feel like I had a fighting chance, especially because I take a "no spray" approach to growing, which means I don't even do preventative copper sprays, which is an option for organic growers. One day I found a few leaves with the trademark olive-colored spots, the next day entire rows had inky-black stem lesions and fruit rot!
Saturday--despite a great market morning--was my least favorite day of summer. I spent the afternoon pulling up plants, tarping entire rows (to heat-kill any fungal spores available for dispersal), bagging plants, and taking almost the entire field tomato patch to the dump. Let's see, that's 400 row-feet of produce lost. Not alot in the grand scheme of things, but for a small-scale grower like me....ACK!
I definitely spent a few moments just standing there in a mix of rage and sadness. As well as a precious minute biting into the single, ripe, cherokee purple tomatoe--warm and wonderful, full of luxuious tastes that I likely won't experience again until next year.
WAH! All that work, all these beautiful green tomatoes...heirlooms, paste tomatoes, a later planting of cherry tomatoes. All that work, all that time, all that patience, and worry, and planning....BLEH.
This is me whining and venting for a few moments. If you want to learn more about how late blight is affecting New England, take the time to read this great New York Times article.

Fried Green Tomatoes, anyone?

Between this post and the next, you'll find me alternately planting furious successions of fall crops in an effort to make up for lost produce, and drinking vermouth, straight, on the rocks (it's all that's in the house...).

Here's to next year!