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Last month was the second wettest July on record. People around here planted all sorts of things from seed: cukes, carrots, beets... most of the seed rotted in the ground. I had some potatoes in the ground, along with some store-bought tomato plants that survived two frosts in early June, and some squash that is still alive.
The temperature warmed up in the end of July and all the survivors were doing very well. We transplanted the tomatoes into large pots and put them on the front porch, and they did even better than the plants in the ground. Then Donna read an article about tomato blight, the same thing that caused the potato famine in Ireland, and I sprayed everything again immediately.
Too bad the spray didn't have the correct fungicide in it!!!
It only took a few days for all the plants to be killed, and there was nothing we could do about it by then. Some of the tomatoes from the front porch plants hadn't been directly affected, so we harvested them, and they will eventually turn red. The tomatoes in the back--closer to the dirt--were all lost. The potatoe tops look like hell, but I dog a few potatoes and they look perfectly edible.
My buddy stopped by this morning and said that he had used something on the surface to protect his plants against what happened to us. I'll have to find out what it is and get some for next spring. The plan is to grow a few tomato plants and pepper plants on the front porch and potatoes and squash in the garden. Unfortunately, even tho I bagged and disposed of all the contaminated plants, there will be spores all over the place just waiting for next summers offerings.
Really depressing! We were well on track to have vine-ripened tomatoes for once. Hopefully the peppers will survived, and we had some squash with dinner. Odd thing about that is that I harvested two. One was ripe and easy to cut, while I damn near had to saw through the second one. Cooking the second one didn't help much either, the skin was still tough and broke apart as it was chewed. Hopefully that was a fluke and the remainder will be edible!
Happy summer, and better luck with your garden!