Season's coda

The crickets are deafening. The seed heads of the blackberry lilies (Bellamcanda) --solidly one-third of their charm—are waving above the garden chairs, and the pineapple sage is in bloom. It’s a sad time of year but a gorgeous one in its own way.

One of the things I most appreciate at summer’s end are the moonflowers (Ipomoea alba), which are doing their darndest to make up for the declining garden. Those magnificent crepe-de-chine blooms that swirl open like dancers’ skirts waft perfume all over the place as they open at the cusp of the evening, attracting daytime pollinator and moth alike, a bridge bloom between day and night. I’ve strategically spaced them around the property – crawling over the rusted garden sink, semi-blanketing the pergola and taking the long-limbed volunteer lemon tomatoes with them, at the south entry to the garden where they struggle manfully to latch the fence closed (I keep unwinding them and repositioning but they are of a stubborn bent.). But the two moonflowers I most appreciate are the knot of heart-shaped leaves and blooms that have twined up a telephone pole that used to hold a purple martin condo in the driveway garden, and the ones in the raspberries I have finally figured out how to protect from both weeding husband and weed-whacking lawn guy.

The driveway moonflowers make the place look welcoming and add another dimension to the Anemone and blowsy-looking perennial Ageratum that are the end-of-season staples there. But the ones in the raspberry patch are my favorites because I can stand very close and watch the different bees clamber into the blooms’ centers. I can observe the way two bees of the same species will share a bloom while the arrival of a new species creates a new dynamic. There are decisions to be made: shall I defend my blooms against the alien newcomer? Allow him to crawl over my back to share the pollen? Turn and face him off? It’s tribal, atavistic, and seems almost political. Watching without having to make a judgment is luxurious.

The vines too have their own agendas and personalities. Some wrap sleek stems over and around and through, picking up a cane to carry it straight into the air while they reach for the rustic overhead trapezoid. Others clutch a berry-laden cane or two to the waist-high clothesline that attempts to keep the canes in bounds. But when I go out with the dogs, wandering and inspecting, it get to visit the little dramas that nature creates.
I’ve all but given up picking –too many fungus-plagued berries thanks to this year’s weather, too little time and energy. And I’ve finished canning and freezing (mostly).
It’s a bittersweet time. The crickets, punctuated by the last few cicadas, are outside my office door singing an end-of-summer song, a coda to the growing season.

Got Tomato Blight?

Got Blight? You betcha. I’ve been not so much fighting blight since it began partway though the summer as watching it slowly eat my tomato plants.

Several things in addition to the weird cool and alternately soggy and dry weather have helped promote blight this year. The upsurge in interest in heirloom tomatoes, which, as superb as many are, are also mostly not as resistant to a lot of the things, particularly fungi, that hybrids were bred to resist. Researchers surmise that a few big commercial nurseries that produce great quantities of non-resistant heirlooms this year shipped quantities of possibly-infected plants to big box stores, which in turn supplied them to a lot of economy—conscious new home gardeners eager for that old-fashioned taste.

I have not, as has been suggested by Cornel and a number of other research universities, applied ‘cooper products’ to my blighted tomatoes. As experts admit, these products are of limited protection against both infection and further damage. Champ WG and NuCop 50 are ‘organic’ products registered in Massachusetts, which has, along with other soggy northeastern states, had a devilish time this year with blight. (In fact everyone I spoke with on a quick trip up through New York and the Adirondacks howled about their lost tomato crops.). Both products are OMRI-listed. (OMRI is the Organic Materials Review Institute.).

Advice from Cornel sources is as follows:
Removal of a few infected plants may slow the disease, but has not been successful in doing so thus far. If removed, bury the infected plants completely, or bag and put in the trash. Don’t compost them.
Home gardeners need to act quickly to make sure that your plants don’t become a source of spores that could infect commercial farms, as late blight spores are easily dispersed by wind….This organism is not seedborne (however, it is tuberborne in potato), so that tomato plants started from seed locally would be free of the disease, at least for now. Some regional farm and garden centers did distribute infected plants from the same supplier. It is likely that many infected tomato plants have been planted across the entire [northeast] region if they originated from larger wholesale stores.
2. If you want to try to control late blight with fungicides, you need to begin spraying fungicide before you see symptoms – and you need to continue spraying regularly. Use a product that contains chlorothalonil. Even here, these products are only effective if used before the disease appears and should be reapplied every 7-10 days, or 5-7 days in wet weather. Chlorothalonil is a protectant fungicide, with no systemic movement in the plant, so thorough coverage is necessary. For organic farmers and gardeners, the options are very limited, since only copper fungicides can be used, and copper is not very effective on late blight. It is easily washed off by rainfall.

Instead of doing anything chemical to combat blight, I’ve been picking assiduously and canning like mad – quart after quart of gorgeous Super San Marzano plum tomatoes that fill a jar with about seven fruits. I’ve enjoyed the fresh tomatoes I have. But I’ve been careful not to spread the spores. I pick tomatoes and then go inside, shuck clothes and wash before doing anything else either in the garden or elsewhere. For good or ill, that’s been my modus operandi. Save and use what you can, don’t spread it around, and hope that next year, which is bound to be different – the hope and the plague of gardening -- will be blight-free.

A large number of anything concentrated in one place and then shipped all over the place is a recipe for exponentially spreading a problem. (We can apply this to all kinds of things: fast food joints, ennui, fear). I’ve yanked out half of the plants, and dumped them in plastic in the garbage, which was hauled off this morning. The rest are slated for disposal this weekend.

I will continue to plant heirlooms, started from seed in my little greenhouse. I will also continue to mix in some hybrids as I do every year. Diversity is the best protection.