Blight resistant tomato varieties
The
agricultural extension websites are quick to tell you that no tomato
variety is immune to the blight, but I've discovered that several are
resistant. In general, tommy-toes
seem to fare quite well, losing the battle much later than the
larger-fruited varieties. On the other hand, the Green Zebra we
were testing for the first time this year turned out to be the most
blight-prone of any of our tomatoes --- we won't grow Green Zebra
again. So far, all of our other slicing tomatoes are faring
pretty well.
The heart of our tomato
patch is our romas, and I'm starting to get a feel for which
roma varieties last longer when blight is in the air.
Large-fruited romas do the worst, and I don't think I'll even save
seeds from Italian San Rodorta this year since the plants blight so
quickly. In contrast, the even more hefty-fruited Russian Roma
plants are only barely blighted. Yellow Roma and Martino's Roma
are currently my roma winners --- the fruits are small, but they ripen
quickly and copiously, and the plants are blight-free so far.
I suspect that if I
tweaked my plantings to focus solely on the most blight-resistant
varieties, the fungus might not enter our patch until weeks
later. Or not at all?
| This post is part of our Organic Tomato Blight Control lunchtime
series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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