Once you've been gardening in an area for a while, you'll start seeing volunteer vegetables.  Unless they're impinging on the space of a beloved crop, I often leave volunteers at least for a while, as a sort of insurance against catastrophe in other parts of the garden.  But Mom reminded me that blight overwinters in left behind potatoes, and that my volunteers are vectors of infection.  Oops!  I ripped out those volunteers as fast as I could, hoping I hadn't let the blight loose on our farm again.

On the other hand, I've also read that the blight can overwinter in weedy nightshades, which we have several of around the farm.  In the spring, the spores can travel several miles through the air, infecting all potatoes and tomatoes in their path.  There's no way I can destroy all of the nightshades even on our farm, so I'm just hoping that the blight control measures I've put into place will be enough to protect my tomatoes.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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