As they come across our desk, we will post interesting articles here about gardening, local and organic foods, politics and food, sustainable living, etc.. In the interest of simplicity, they will be posted in chronological order and not by category.
Is a Food Revolution Now in Season? by Andrew Martin
New York Times: March 21, 2009
Advocates of organic and locally grown food are beginning to find a receptive ear in the new administration in Washington.
My Turn: Uproot your lawn to help feed the hungry by Cheryl Bourassa Concord Monitor: March 30, 2009
Local church uproots lawn and plants a garden to feed the hungry.
Acid or Alkaline? What ph means in gardenspeak. by Marion Owen
This article takes a look at pH from a practical gardening standpoint.
Attra has an excellent piece on Late Blight and organic control. One thing I learned is that the phytophtora infestans spores produced through sexual reproduction can survive several years in the soil. No mention of how New England winters affect that. Asexually produced spores – sporangia – can only survive in living host tissue such as culled potatoes. From there they can go on to infect the rest of the harvest or return as an infected volunteer. This is, in fact, the way most outbreaks start. This is a link to the article.
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/lateblight.pdf#xml=http://search.ncat.org/texis/search/pdfhi.txt?query=late+blight&pr=ATTRAv2&prox=page&rorder=500&rprox=500&rdfreq=500&rwfreq=500&rlead=500&rdepth=0&sufs=0&order=r&cq=&id=4a98fc67d
Thanks Eric for the link! Very informative. My blighted tomatoes infected one stand of potatoes and I cut down the potato foilage as soon as I noticed the problem. I just dug up a fairly decent harvest of cobbler and fingerling potatoes, so I think I acted just in a nick of time. I’ll plant a cover crop of oats which should help to clean up some of the problem, plus I’ll rotate into a clean bed. I usually save potatoes from year to year and replant, but not this time. I’ll start with fresh seed potatoes next year.
My Kennebec potatoes seem completely unharmed even thought they were actually touching tomatoes with blight. I’ll definitely buy that variety again for next year and probably try one of the other potatoes they recommended.