oh, the blight

So far this has been a beautiful summer for growing vegetables. No long periods of drought, no major storms that lasted for days on end, a little cooler than the tomatoes and peppers might like it, but nothing really to complain about. But for months now and maybe you’ve heard about this too, there’s been this fungus going around causing some serious problems for farmers growing tomatoes and potatoes. The fungus leads to a disease called late blight, which is the same disease that wiped out the Irish potato crop that led to wide spread famine, and led to massive immigration to the US early in the 20th century.

Earlier this week, we found signs of late blight in our potatoes and some on our tomatoes. It didn’t come as much of a surprise, people have been seeing it throughout Eagle Heights gardens for a while now, and it was reported at Troy Gardens Farm just outside Madison a few weeks ago.  And so it goes, though it is a bummer.

Late blight works quickly on potatoes, first starting in the foliage; the disease spreads to the tubers and turns the potatoes to mush within a few days. So, when we saw that it had reached our potato field, which we had planted with Yukon’s, Pontiac Reds, and Kennebec’s for a late season storage crop, we realized that we were going to have to dig up the potatoes even though we had planned to harvest much later. And in a valiant effort to save the potatoes, eight or so students dug up the potato field. The tubers were small, some full grown, but most just bigger than stones. A whole lot better than rotten ones, anyway. And we loaded up crates with what we had dug up, three big ones that must have been well over 100 pounds all together, and put them under the trees to cure (to dry). 

On Sunday, I went to the garden to check on a few plants and on my way out I walked past where the potatoes were being stored. Of the 100 pounds of pounds of potatoes that were left under the trees, maybe 30 pounds or so remained, the rest having disappeared sometime the night before.
All this is to say, that sadly, we will have no more potatoes to give you this year. Hopefully you made some good use of what you’ve received in your shares, or have plans for the ones you haven’t got around to using.

If you have any questions about how to deal with your tomatoes or potatoes if they have late blight, feel free to give me an e-mail at schaude@wisc.edu.