By Kathy Bowen
We plotted. We planned. We mapped out our plots.
We read and re-read Mel Bartholomew’s “All New Square Foot Gardening” through the winter and early spring.
My husband, Tom, designed improvements on ole Mel’s garden structure.
A rebar-reinforced concrete foundation and stacked concrete block walls in a U-formation provide an easy reach for harvesting the anticipated overflow crop of vegetables, especially tomatoes.
We put in a layer of wood chips and then a mixture of soil, chicky poo and horsey doo from a local nursery.
On Memorial Day, Mel’s book in hand, we gave each tomato plant, eggplant, pepper plant, zucchini seed, onion, pea, bean and lettuce seed the right amount of space.
Our raised bed garden was a picture of perfection last week.
Twenty-eight tomato plants, representing five varieties, were growing through cages of wire mesh that was manufactured for concrete reinforcement, but bent with care by my husband.
Our little babies, as we have been calling them each morning and evening, had grown tall and strong through the squares of the mesh. Dozens of yellow flowers had transformed into little green fruits which quickly grew and grew, with some larger than my fist.
We had our first tomato sandwiches the last week in July and had gifted quite a few around the neighborhood, knowing we had weeks and weeks of tomatoes ahead of us.
I spent the better part of last week interviewing experts and farmers in the region about late blight and how quickly it can spread through a field. I had written the story (you can read it here) and looked at the pictures.
On Thursday, we noticed a few dark spots on some of our tomato leaves but we thought it was just a wilt from the warm temperatures of the week.
Saturday morning we had to face the fact that our beloved tomato plants have the blight.
The fungus was on more than half of the leaves. Probably a quarter of the tomatoes had spots, as well as most of the stems.
Tom hacked away at the leaves and removed the plants that were too far gone.
He gathered 80 green tomatoes, half a dozen yellow or red ones, and the rest went into a black plastic bag with the fungus ravaged discards.
I don’t know if it will help, but I washed all the apparently good fruit with vinegar to kill any remaining spores, and put them on newspapers to dry.
Looks like Christmas gifts this year will be green tomato fig rather than the planned salsa!
Here’s my grandmother Dorothy Pitcher’s green tomato fig recipe:
Slice 7 pounds of green tomatoes; put in brine over night. Drain.
Add: 4 lbs. sugar, 1 lb. raisins, 1 pt. vinegar, 1 to 2 tsp. cloves, 1 tsp. cinnamon. Cook until thick.
Kathy Bowen is a reporter at the Gazette’s Ballston Spa bureau. You can reach her at 885-6705 or kbowen@dailygazette.net.
To learn more about tomato blight, click here.
Greenpoint focuses on environmental issues. If you have a question or a topic you’d like addressed, e-mail greenpoint@dailygazette.net.
