Late blight, the same fungus that killed three-quarters of Ireland's potato crop in 1846, has taken a severe toll on tomato plants around New York. It's been confirmed in 30 or so of the state's 60ish counties, and Margaret McGrath (a Cornell vegetable epidemiologist) said on today's Brian Lehrer show that plant authorities simply haven't checked the remaining counties.
The fungus is highly contagious, and this spread is starting mainly in backyard gardens. Most outlets are saying that the main source of the blight in the Northeast is plants from big-box stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's. One supplier in the southeastern United States seems to be at the root (no pun intended) of this outbreak. The supplier, Bonnie Plants, says it isn't to blame and that its plants were somehow affected along the supply chain... To the company's credit, they've aggressively worked on recalling all of their plants.
Yellow leaf? yes. Telltale fuzzy spores? No.
Cherry tomatoes. Yum.Sure, my plants have yellowing and even browning leaves. But that likely has more to do with the nearly nonstop rain this summer, and the fact that a fairly big plant is in a fairly small pot. Are our plants faring better — they're not dropping dead, at least — because we bought them from a local greenhouse? It's possible that quality control is easier when the production scale is smaller. I wonder what, if anything, the GMO-ness of our tomatoes has to do with their hardiness.
Here is McGrath's Cornell blog.
The one on the left was ripe enough a couple days after this was shot.
During the cage installation, three tomatoes fell off of the big plant; we kept them outside anyway. Today I ate one; half of it was good. (The other half was a bit more mealy than I'd have liked.) We've eaten several of the cherry tomatoes, and they've been great.
Last September, I took an incredible daylong class at the Culinary Institute of America right up the road in Hyde Park titled "Taste of the Hudson Valley." It was more than a Millbrook Winery this, Sprout Creek Farm that, Stone Barns blah blah. It delved deeply into food as politics; more deeply than many of the participants were comfortable, I imagine.
Among the hottest topics were the buzzwords "local" and "sustainable." Late blight appears to be neither. Although produce with either of those labels is often more expensive, it seems to be worth it, so far. Does produce come more locally than from my back deck (not that I have a front deck)? I'm still in my first season as a wannabe farmer, so I'm not sure how sustainable this endeavor will be.
The class' instructor reminded us that we vote with our dollars. And it's a deeply personal, and political, decision to just say "no" to big agribusiness. Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I buy the majority of my fruits and vegetables at the local supermarket, but the transition to local/fresh/sustainable feels pretty good. I've been hitting up two local (haha, I had to throw that in) farmers markets and loving what I've come home with.
It's also really cool to me to be able to have a conversation with the person who actually is doing the growing. Maybe I just like to talk; maybe the investment and exchange of ideas appeals to me. But after last Thursday's trip to the Fishkill market, I realized that nowhere else would someone have offered me a plum, even while I was checking out the blueberries. Nowhere else would someone have jogged across a parking lot to tell me I had money hanging out of my back pocket. Nowhere else would a farmer give me advice on what to do with my own fennel, as I wasn't buying hers...
I think I'll go back and see them again tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment