Tomato islands and succession planting
I
like to call step four in our campaign against the tomato blight
"tomato islands." While it's quite true that blight spores can
travel up to a mile in damp weather, planting patches of tomatoes in
different parts of the garden can be relatively effective in keeping
the blight from spreading if the summer stays hot and dry. So
while our romas (and a few slicers) are all clumped together along the
sunniest
edge of the mule garden, I've got slicing tomatoes and tommy-toes in
three other areas. The ones in the far-off front garden still
seem to be blight-free.
I'm also taking a page
out of our neighbor's book. Last year, while touring a friend's
garden at the end of the summer, I saw that he had a healthy tomato
plant still spitting out fruits. "How did you do that?!"
I exclaimed, and he told me that he'd thrown some seeds in the ground
in early June. This year I followed suit and seeded three more
tomato plants a couple of weeks after our frost-free date. These
late plants are starting to set fruits, and so far look pristine.
Perhaps they will give us a fall harvest?
| This post is part of our Organic Tomato Blight Control lunchtime
series.
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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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