Andrew

My garden isn't doing well. I had a great bean harvest and a pretty good pea harvest, but my tomatoes and potatoes are doing terribly. The blight that is sweeping through the Northeast is killing my plants. I lost all my potato plants and managed to salvage a meager 7 potatoes. I should have had upwards of 20lbs of potatoes. So far I've managed to harvest one tomato and it looks like I might get about 20-30 tomatoes before my plants succumb.

My tomato plants are slowly, but surely, succumbing to the blight. All but one of the plants has a large majority of leaves with brown and yellow spots on them. The picture below shows what the leaves look like:

This year has been awful. My coworker said it's the worst year for tomatoes he's seen since he started growing tomatoes. He's been growing them for over a decade. So my first year has been very educational. I've learned that weather and biological attacks can't be predicted. I still have a desire to have a polyculture farm and this has strengthened my resolve. I might lose one or two species, but if I grow 12-15 different species I'll still have plenty of food to harvest.

If only large commercial farmers could figure that out. Monoculture has the potential for utter catastrophic loss. Since blight is the problem this year I would be remiss in avoiding mention of the Great Famine in Ireland. When a large portion of the population is dependent upon one or two crops (corn and soybeans in the US), then the potential for devastation is high.