Tomato Blight

I spoke with Cheryl Rogowski last week, and had an opportunity to ask her about the outbreak of tomato blight that has struck the region this year. Cheryl said she had lost around 1000 of her 5000 tomato plants. Well, the good news is that leaves 4000 plants. Cheryl felt that there would be plenty of fruit this year, but nowhere near last year's bounty.

Because of her farm's status as Certified Naturally Grown, the use of synthetic chemical fungicides is prohibited, limiting the number of ways she has available to battle the disease.

Below is a clipping from an article in the Boston Globe that gives a good feeling for what farmers in the northeast are experiencing.

clipped from www.boston.com Late blight yields bitter harvest Disease that spawned Ireland’s potato famine hits New England Organic farms, including Lindentree, have been hit especially hard by the outbreak, because they cannot use the strong, synthetic fungicides that work best to protect their harvest. Produce farmers in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England are now battling late blight, a fungus with tiny spores spread by the wind that rots tomato and potato plants. It is the same disease that was responsible for the 19th-century Irish potato famine. LINCOLN - Slumped in his tractor, Ari Kurtz looked out at his fields, where rotting fruit and gnarled plants fringed with dead leaves were all that remained of what should have been a bountiful tomato harvest. “This has been one of the most challenging years organic farmers have faced in the Northeast,’’ said Bill Duesing, president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association.