Carol Deppe Books, especially re:Late Blight

[Mark_Thompson]

Just read The Tao of Vegetable Gardening, what a cool book. In it she has a section called “Why It Will Soon Be Impossible to Grow Our Current Generation of Heirloom Tomatoes and
What to Do About It-Late Blight 101” where she predicts just that. Just curious if eight years later this prediction is turning out to be at all accurate?

[bower]

I suppose it depends on your location. Some areas get late blight regularly every season - I think the PNW is affected pretty often.
Overall though, if you look at the discussion year by year on the board, it doesn't seem that LB is putting much of a dent in heirloom growing around the world. Maybe one place or another is badly affected in one season or another.
I suspect that the tomatoes of commerce ie grown in intensive monocultures are already being chosen for the LB resistance genes and other disease resistance. IDK if heirlooms are ever grown at that sort of scale and intensity for market.
Do you get late blight in Hawaii?

[rossomendblot]

We get late blight most years here in the UK. Last year it didn't come until very late in the growing season, but the year before in a cooler, wetter summer it decimated a lot of people's tomatoes early on. It's usually only a problem for tomatoes grown outdoors, we've never had blight on tomatoes grown in the greenhouse.

Many outdoor growers are now only growing blight resistant hybrid varieties, I grow some myself. There have been quite a few new blight resistant F1s with much better taste released in the last few years. Heirloom tomatoes aren't as popular over here anyway, most people stick to the same hybrid cherries or mediums with the occasional OP thrown in.

After so many years of only cherries, growing beefsteaks and hearts has been a revelation for me. You will almost never find anything larger than a medium round tomato in the shops, unless you go to some sort of farmer's market or online where they can be expensive. I will not give up growing heirloom/OP varieties no matter how bad blight gets.

[MissS]

Knock on wood. So far I have never seen late blight and I don't ever want to either.

[Mark_Thompson]

@rossomendblot Deppe specifically mentions how bad late blight was across the pond, and predicts it becoming similarly bad in ‘Murica. She uses this prediction to call for people to use varieties like Iron Lady to breed resistant OP varieties to become “tomorrow’s heirlooms.”
Really really loved her book and the tomato sections were awesome, just checking up on this prediction.

[bower]

I do think it's a great idea to use tomatoes like Iron Lady with known disease resistance genes to breed resistance into 'tomorrow's heirlooms'. That would have to be done in an environment where LB is common, obviously, because otherwise the amateur breeder has no way of selecting for those resistance genes. Since I've never seen LB here, I would never know if the resistance gene was present in F2 and beyond.
This is where professionals with the latest tools have a huge advantage over amateur breeders. They can test for genetic markers and know whether the desired alleles were passed on or not, without exposing the plants to blight to see if they survive or not.

[rossomendblot]

Late blight can be such a major bummer. When the humidity comes I get a bit paranoid checking out every bit of discolouration on the leaves. Once you are sure it's blight, every tomato has to come off the plant because once the blight is in the stem it gets to the fruit and they turn to black mush in days.

Farmer's use the 'Hutton Criteria' to determine when to spray antifungals, which is 2 consecutive days of a 10°C minimum and ≥90% relative humidity for 6 hours each day.

There are some late blight resistant OP cherries which were bred in Germany. I grew some last year: Primabella, Primavera and Resi. Here is the website of the breeding project - https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb11agrar/en/ ... to-project

[Mark_Thompson]

Since I've never seen LB here

Same, knock on wood

[MissTee]

Have had LB three times in the past 10 years. I guess it’s either going to be that or frost that ends it all in my short growing season.

I grew LB resistant varieties after the first episode. Tasteless round red grocery store type fruit, mostly with the Mountain name in it. Never again. It is devastating to see your plants and fruit shrivel in a day or so, but I have returned to growing heirloom and OP varieties nonetheless. After so many years of growing uninspiring hybrids I’ll take the chance on these.

(BTW you can try to harvest all the unblemished fruit when you first see black marks on the stems, but I have had most of it turn to mush indoors. Very few fruit escape from being infected.)

[rossomendblot]

(BTW you can try to harvest all the unblemished fruit when you first see black marks on the stems, but I have had most of it turn to mush indoors. Very few fruit escape from being infected.)

A few years ago I harvested ~10kg of green fruit from two EM Champion plants, very happy that I'd saved them from blight. Then gradually over a week they all started turning black. Horrible disease, though incredible how fast it spreads from leaf to fruit.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@MissTee "Tasteless round red grocery store type fruit, mostly with the Mountain name in it."

We've had above average results from Mountain Merit, Pride, and Magic, with the latter winning the coveted Jardín del Gotch Taste Test Award four (4) seasons running.

The Gotch

[MissS]

@MissS "Tasteless round red grocery store type fruit, mostly with the Mountain name in it."

We've had above average results from Mountain Merit, Pride, and Magic, with the latter winning the coveted Jardín del Gotch Taste Test Award four (4) seasons running.

The Gotch

Where ever did I say that?

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@MissS "Where ever did I say that?"

Nowhere, near as I can figure; The Gotch humbly regrets the error.

It was @MissTee and I fat-fingered clicking on the mention, and it's been emended in the original comment.

The Gotch

[MissS]

@Cornelius_Gotchberg thank goodness! I was scratching my head and wondering if it was getting to be time to check into a home for the senile.