tomato late blight :(

i love tomatoes. mother grows hundreds of different tomato plants, of many different varieties, in her garden every year. due to her influence, i have become more and more interested in fancy heirloom tomatoes. this year i was very excited to order some new-to-me varieties of tomatoes from terra edibles. saving seeds from heirloom tomatoes is fun and rewarding, and both my mother and i have been coordinating our seed orders to maximize tomato diversity between the two of us. i was especially looking forward to having fresh cherry tomatoes from my backyard, and if i managed to produce enough romas, i wanted to try my hand at making homemade ketchup.

a week or two ago i noticed my tomato plants were starting to go brown at the shoot tips and on the fruits themselves. i took this to be a sign that they were overdue for staking. in the past i have always staked my tomato plants, but this year i thought maybe i'd experiment with just letting them sprawl. after seeing them become so unhappy, i assumed it was because of the way i had heartlessly let them drag in the dirt. i immediately tied them up off the ground, hoping that it wasn't too late for them to recover from my horrible mistreatment.



alas, they continued to get worse and worse. i began to realize that something else was going on other than just general dragging-in-the-dirt unhappiness. then i discovered that tomato late blight, a disease i have never before encountered, is making its rounds throughout the city (it has been an uncommonly wet year, and this disease is spreading to areas where it never occurred before thanks to climate change). from a quick google search, i learned that once this disease becomes apparent in one's garden, there's not a whole lot that can be done to stop it. the key is to take preventative measures, and obviously it was too late for that for my crop. sadly, i had to remove and destroy every single one of my tomato plants. it's just not fair, especially since i have a friend living only a few blocks away whose tomatoes are beautiful and completely unaffected. why me?


poor, poor romas.

what i have learned about tomato late blight via google:

• heirloom tomatoes are more susceptible than hybrid varieties.
  
• prevent moisture from remaining on the leaves as much as you can; plant tomatoes in a sunny location, prevent splashback of rainwater by mulching around your plants, avoid watering in the evening, and drip irrigate if possible.
  
• STAKE YOUR TOMATOES so they are not lying on the ground.
  
• avoid crowding tomatoes too close together, and consider removing lower leaves which are more susceptible to splashback.
  
• remove infected material as soon as you see it to avoid spreading the disease to other plants. DO NOT COMPOST diseased plant matter; it must be disposed of by burning or bagging and dumpstering.
  
• grow plants in a different area the following year, if possible. i am going to attempt to grow mine in pots on my patio, rather than in the garden itself. this will mean i will not be able to grow as many tomatoes, due to the extra expense of buying pots and soil (boo).