Woe is me, my friends, for we, all of us, are stuck in a predicament so dire that it is almost beyond description. What if, I ask you, the fruit of your labors, the carrot at the end of the stick, long chased-after and all the more desirable for it, were to fall to dust suddenly upon being grasped? What if, gentelmen, a long-desired woman, finally within your grasp after years of wooing and betrothal, was overcome by stroke and died, even as she finally lay on your marital bed? Truly I tell you that you would be no sadder than I am now.
For I am stricken with the blight: the Late Blight, the very disease which decimated those potato crops, sending hordes of German and Irish immigrants to these American shores. OK, I am not directly affected by the disease, I mean, I don't have blight-sores opening up on my own arms & legs, but it's still bad. In fact, it's worse: it's hurting the tomatoes.
First, a bit of backstory: in two of the last four years, I have cursed myself by planting tomatoes. Each time I planted tomatoes, fate intervened such that I had to move, unexpectedly, on August 1st, just as the tomatoes bore fruit. Somehow, my tomato misfortune deepened last year: I was traveling in August, and was unable to eat any top-quality heirloom tomatoes at all.
But this all pales in comparison to the destruction this year: my ill luck has sunk the entire east coast tomato crop, hitting the heirlooms varieties, with their limited defenses, hardest of all.
In truth I have already eaten more heirlooms this year than last, but the Blight has resulted in a much thinner and weaker crop than I would have hoped for. For me, knowing that the Blight is waiting around every corner has, in fact, become an incentive to enjoy the season as much as I can, and I implore each and every one of you to do the same.
2 comments:
I had never before associated tomato blight with Victorian melodramas. Oh, and we got plenty of tomatoes here. So juicy. So good.
my tomatoes have done well even as they are in suburban massachusetts. heirlooms and all have born fruit. however my hubbard squash have been hit pretty hard by vine borer beetles. and in their weakened condition, they are finding it difficult to overcome another fungal beast--powdery leaf mold. i have three young squash on what were healthy young side vines unchewed by vine borers. but now these vines are suffering the powdery mildew. i can only hope they survive long enough for the squash to mature somewhat. (note: i already have three mature blue hubbards including one that looks to be tipping the scale at ~30 lbs.)
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