Anyone who knows me well knows that I am wicked stubborn. Ask my family. This week was a test to my tenacity.
As each week this season brought pounding rain to the farm, many of the plants succumbed to disease. Do I try to nurture the plants along? Hoping for some yield, if reduced, and all the while allowing the disease to spread? In the organic growers' toolbox, there's few options to protect against plant disease - especially fungal diseases in this very wet year.
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| Cantaloupe with powdery mildew as the leaves die, the weeds take over. | | |
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| Lemon cucumbers try to keep producing. |
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| Here's watermelon with the foliage dead it has no way to ripen. |
Within the last week all the big plant diseases have visited our farm (In our county, Late Blight for tomatoes and potatoes has been spotted). While trying to save my winter squash and my late planting of more cucumbers and summer squash, I asked my farm manager to harrow in five planting beds.
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| Gone are the cantaloupe, watermelons and cucumbers. |
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When the fruit won't have a chance to ripen and before the disease takes hold in new plantings, it seemed the right time to let go of a few crops.
