Joel_BC
Super Self-Sufficient
Maybe somebody reading this will have had blight problems, too. 
Organic gardeners and farmers in my general area have dealt with blight attacks in in the last couple years. Weather conditions here have been favorable to the airborne fungus that can lead to the development of blight in host plants, namely tomatoes and potatoes.
Many tomato patches - and greenhouses full of tomato plants - got hit in 2010, with the plants going limp and developing splotches on the stems... and all the forming fruit going mushy. The problem hits some homesteads and farms, and misses others (a little like a tornado touching down and wreaking surface havoc here and there, in tornado country).
In 2011, the same thing happened - only it was more extensive. Some acreages that had been hit in 2010 were hit again in 2011, but in some cases (our own place here, included) gardens and greenhouses that did okay in 2010 were hit.
We lost all our tomatoes and potatoes last year.
So here's the plan we're following for this year...
Being as thorough as we could, we removed affected plant material from our growing sites last year. Plus, we've chosen a different patch of our large garden to plant our potatoes in. We're not planting Russets (which were our mainstay variety for very many years)... they got hit early and hard in our garden and on our neighbors' organic farm. We're experimenting with new varieties that neighbors recommended.
With tomatoes, we're planting varieties tested by Washington State University in a blight-ridden environment and that WSU recommends as resistant.
In both the greenhouse (where we grow our tomatoes) and in the potato patch, we're soaking the soil with a bacterial formulation intended to devour undesirable fungal populations in the soil and on the stems/leaves of plants. It's called Actinovate, and one organic farm that has weathered the outbreaks well has recommended it highly. You dissolve it in water and either spray it on the upper plant or soak it down into the soil... we're doing both.
We're optimistic at this point...
Organic gardeners and farmers in my general area have dealt with blight attacks in in the last couple years. Weather conditions here have been favorable to the airborne fungus that can lead to the development of blight in host plants, namely tomatoes and potatoes.
Many tomato patches - and greenhouses full of tomato plants - got hit in 2010, with the plants going limp and developing splotches on the stems... and all the forming fruit going mushy. The problem hits some homesteads and farms, and misses others (a little like a tornado touching down and wreaking surface havoc here and there, in tornado country).
In 2011, the same thing happened - only it was more extensive. Some acreages that had been hit in 2010 were hit again in 2011, but in some cases (our own place here, included) gardens and greenhouses that did okay in 2010 were hit.
We lost all our tomatoes and potatoes last year.
So here's the plan we're following for this year...Being as thorough as we could, we removed affected plant material from our growing sites last year. Plus, we've chosen a different patch of our large garden to plant our potatoes in. We're not planting Russets (which were our mainstay variety for very many years)... they got hit early and hard in our garden and on our neighbors' organic farm. We're experimenting with new varieties that neighbors recommended.
With tomatoes, we're planting varieties tested by Washington State University in a blight-ridden environment and that WSU recommends as resistant.
In both the greenhouse (where we grow our tomatoes) and in the potato patch, we're soaking the soil with a bacterial formulation intended to devour undesirable fungal populations in the soil and on the stems/leaves of plants. It's called Actinovate, and one organic farm that has weathered the outbreaks well has recommended it highly. You dissolve it in water and either spray it on the upper plant or soak it down into the soil... we're doing both.
We're optimistic at this point...
