Disaster...

Blight 1 - 0 Me

The action I took last weekend was to no avail. A visit to the plot this afternoon revealed the extent to which tomato blight can ruin a crop within a week. I was greeted by withered plants, their stems black and buckling, and a crop of wisened fruits falling from the trusses in their droves. I've salvaged what I could of the decent green tomatoes and will use them to make a batch of courgette and green tomato chutney. However, there will be no fresh tomatoes this year save for the three plants I have growing in the blight-free saftey of my garden. Out of courtesy to my fellow plot holders I have cut down and removed all the plants and the fallen fruits and have binned the lot.

I don't think I've ever been as disappointed as a gardener as today. Having grown the plants from seeds several months ago, I have nurtured them throughout their lives, growing them on in ever larger pots, hardening them off in the garden and protecting them from frosts and chill winds, before planting them out on the plot full of hope and anticipation for a bumper harvest...all for nothing.

With hindsight there were probably too many plants in the bed, which prevented air from circulating amongst them and probably contributing to the speed with which the blight struck. I probably could have been more asiduous with the pinching out, allowing too many of the side shoots to grow and adding to the cramped conditions. I probably should have grown the plants in a bed further away from last year's infected crop. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I will learn from all these things next year. But having to rip out all my plants without even tasting a ripe fruit after all that work and effort is a real blow. It also goes to show how fragile the aim of self-sufficiency can be. 'Growing your own' is enjoying a real boom, with many people turning to the health and taste benefits of growing their own organic vegetables. But in reality it only took a week for one of my main crops for the next few months to be ruined to show that, for all the positives, there can also be some negatives and it isn't always as easy as the experts and the tv programmes make it out to be. Oh well, at least I have my courgettes :-)