Disease-resistant tomato update
For the past three years,
by this part of June, I've been keeping secrets from my husband. I'd
come in for lunch on Mondays disgruntled and would dread walking down
the tomato row. That's right --- my weekly pruning sessions inevitably turned into a game of fight-the-blight.
It's been drier this
year, but based on neighborly reports, I think the real reason blight
has yet to hit our farm is because I paid the big bucks for blight-resistant tomato varieties.
I've been cutting off lower leaves so they don't drag on the ground,
but otherwise have nothing to do during my Monday sessions except tying
up stems that have grown a foot or more during the last week. Never mind
the eventual yield, those pricey seeds have already paid for themselves
in anti-depressant effect!
Most
of the new tomato varieties act just the way you'd expect, but Plum
Regal seems to be a little odd. I've grown determinate varieties before,
but none have topped out so short --- right around knee high. To keep
the plants growing, I've taken to leaving the suckers in place since the
main stem seems to have already achieved its preferred height.
What's with the
nasturtium? It's just another burst of happiness in the tomato zone this
year! I planted our 2015 tomatoes in old hugelkultur beds, and one spot
contained relatively unrotted wood that made it hard to dig
tomato-planting holes. So I instead filled that gap with nasturtiums,
borage, zinnias, and chamomile. It's fun to have a colorful collection
of flowers in between two of my tomato plants!
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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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