Blight

I’m so frustrated. Blight has hit my garden this season. Wiped out all of my indeterminate tomatoes and all of my potatoes. It killed my little moringa tree and damaged my rhubarb. I did use copper fungicide as a preventative.

I collected meager potato harvest. I then dumped the soil and straw from the 15 grow bags onto a tarp, spread it out to about four inches thick, watered it and covered it completely in clear 3 mil plastic.

I approach gardening from a permaculture perspective incorporating a couple of hugelkutur mounds and interplanting. What can I do for the rest of the garden to minimize this disease? I’d rather not take a year off to spread plastic over the whole garden, but it seems that may be my only choice.

I feel your pain. Practically every summer I start off with big healthy tomato plants, and then just as the fruit starts to ripen the leaves start to yellow and droop. I recently found out that they really don't like water on the foliage, especially in cooler climates like this one. So next summer I'm going to try some sort of canopy to keep the rain off. Where are you located?

Potatoes can be touchy with blights and many gardeners are adamant that you never grow them in the same bed from year to year. I always miss lots of small ones and have them sprout later, and some of those do as well as the ones I plant from "certified" seed potatoes. I would say to try in a new spot next year and hope they don't get stricken.

Moringa has been hard for me to get to flourish outside the glasshouse, so I don't really have any tips there. And the only thing that stops my rhubarb is drought or winter dormancy...but it's doing well right now (still winter) and we have had several nights down to -3 or more in the past couple of weeks. The plants are somewhat sheltered by the feijoas, so maybe that's why they're happy.