Tomato Blight

I went out to pick produce yesterday morning and was shocked to realize that we had been hit by the late tomato/potato blight. 90+% of our tomatoes are dead! Just when we started to get ripe tomatoes we were shocked into the realization that our tomato crop has ended. Last night I researched causes and cures. Tomato/potato blight is the same fungus that caused the great potato famine. From an non-chemical fungicide standpoint, there is little that is proven to work, and once your plants are brown there is nothing that will work. We're in the brown phase. The blight is transferred from plants that have the blight by producing blight spores, and since many of the store bought plants come from many of the same places, blight usually starts with them and strikes across the country. As you know from earlier blog posts, we grew our plants from seeds that we started this winter BUT we also purchased about 30 plants from area stores. That is likely where the blight came from since the other way to get blight is from leftover plant material that has blight spores on it and we planted in an area away from any previous vegetables. I can't tell you the feeling of looking at hundreds of brown plants that were beautiful green plants that we had invested so much time, effort and anticipation into. So now what?
Well we are supposed to destroy the plants that have the blight to keep it from spreading to other farms. During my research I read that it is possible to get the blight from compost containing old blight infected plant material so I guess composting is out. Since we cant compost them I guess we'll have to pull the plants, pile them up and put a torch to them.
Lessons for next year are to raise all of our own tomatoe plants, ensure that they have only the highest blight resistance, and to keep potatoes far away from the tomatoes. Commercial produce growers can and do bathe their plants in fungicide throughout the growing season and although we are commercial, I don't think our customers would like tomatoes from Mulberry Grove Family Farm that were bathed in fungicide.
Well, growing farm products without the conveniences of industrial agriculture can be more difficult and require us to be smarter, more diverse and learn from our mistakes, but we know that our customers appreciate the difference.