Project 365 day 221: Blighted

The tomatoes were coming along nicely. I grew a lot from seed, and was rather late potting them into their final, large pots, so they got a bit leggy, but they have been filling out nicely despite the lack of sun. There are a lot of quite good sized green tomatoes. I was hoping they would ripen soon. They are on the deck, alongside the greenhouses, as I have been trying, not very successfully, to manage a whitefly infestation in both greenhouses.

Today, however, the signs of blight are clear on many of the plants. A few leaves are turning brown; some have the tell-tale dark blotches with light rims on the underside. Some of the stems have dark patches, and a couple of the tomatoes have unmistakable brown patches. For the moment, the plants still look good, so it's hard to accept that my plans for gazpacho lunches and passata in the freezer will not come to fruition this year. There is no cure for blight. The only thing I can do is pick all the green tomatoes before the rot takes hold and make them into chutney, then burn the plants. I have five Mountain Magic plants on the balcony, which are a somewhat blight resistant variety and may survive. The last remaining plants in the greenhouse may escape too, but they are in poor condition because of the whitefly, and if I bring them outside so that I can fumigate, they too may well succumb to blight.

It's not really a surprise. We have had many weeks of rain, high humidity and relatively warm weather, perfect for blight. I diagnosed blight on the potatoes over a week ago, and P has been removing all the tops to burn. The potatoes are best left in the ground for a couple of weeks, as the spores do not survive in soil once the plants have gone. We plant quite early to allow for this eventuality, and should still get a reasonable crop - and the row of blight resistant Sarpo Mira plants are so far in good shape. The potatoes are at the bottom of the vegetable garden, quite some distance from the tomatoes on the deck, but I knew the tomatoes were still at risk from the wind-borne spores. This doesn't stop me from being very despondent today.

This is our second significant experience of blight. Seven years ago, in our first summer growing here, all our potatoes and tomatoes were affected quite early in the season, leaving only a small crop. We had moved to Kent from North East England, where we had lived through the post-industrial decline of areas whose coal mines, shipyards and steelworks had been closed. Seeing the speed and completeness of the decay of our crops, I understood more fully than before what it really means to say a place is blighted.