My plants are social distancing. I had to separate them to stop the spread of Early Blight. My potato plants, tomato plants and green beans had been thriving. I noticed a few brown spots on the potato leaves one day, and the next day my garden was a total wipe out. Ninety percent of the leaves were brown, curled, dead and everything had to be pulled immediately to stop the fungus from spreading. Blight is common and inevitable, and gardeners must learn how to hold it off for as long as possible. I had no idea. Why didn’t somebody warn me? There should have been a giant warning on the bag of seed potatoes, or perhaps in the “Time to Plant Potatoes” section of my gardening handbook. Why didn’t the photogenic young man on YouTube harvesting pots of potatoes warn me? Caution! Potatoes and tomatoes are susceptible to blight!
My mistake was that I allowed my leaves to get wet. I watered from on high, knocking little pests off leaves, trying to tackle visible threats. Not until I looked up diseases of potato plants did I learn about blight and how to prevent it. Now I know. Water plants from below and don’t let leaves touch the soil where the fungus lives. Plant plants far enough apart to encourage air flow. That’s how to stave off the blight. I admit that warnings may have been hiding in plain sight and I missed them in my enthusiasm to be a suburban farmer. That’s typical of gardeners I bet… enthusiastic and eager and in denial about the pests and the pitfalls. In the world of gardening, like in the rest of our lives, we want certainty and ease.
Potato blight caused the Irish Potato Famine. In 1852 half the potato crops were lost. In the next seven years, three quarters of every crop was destroyed by blight. Ireland at that time was governed by Great Britain and farmland was primarily owned by wealthy English and Anglo-Irish Protestants. The Irish Catholic tenant farmers bore the burden of the failed crops. These families relied on their potatoes for food and for their livelihood. As a result of eight years of blight, nearly one million Irish died of starvation. Another one million left the country for England and North America. In Ireland, lives were destroyed swiftly and relentlessly by an invisible scourge. The famine changed life in Ireland for generations. The historians continue to debate about the role the government did and did not play. Did leaders simply ignore the plight of the poor Irish farmers? Or perhaps it was incompetence in the face of catastrophe.
It is our turn to live through a catastrophe. Covid-19 is an invisible, persistent plague turning lives upside down and still raising more questions than answers. I am used to having answers. Most people want answers, and when there are none, people will fill in their own blanks. Uncertainty feels like our enemy. How will we look as a nation and as a globe when we get through this? Who will survive and thrive? Who will survive and struggle? And for how long? I am hopeful that we will all be okay. From disruption must follow adaptation and growth. What is the alternative?
My raised beds are looking quite empty. My Swiss Chard and carrots seem unaffected. I have learned how to water effectively. I will persist and plant something new. My baby tomato plants will maintain their social distance so I can stop this fungal spread. I like the learning curve I’m on, enjoying the low stakes of backyard gardening. What a luxury it is to try and fail, learn and grow. The historians will have the luxury to debate how we dealt with the Covid 19 pandemic and I am sure they will let us know how we did. They will discover that we made mistakes. I hope they see that we learned from our mistakes and became wiser, kinder, more patient, more generous and more committed to the common good.