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Farmer-Rick

(11,913 posts)
1. Most vegetables Americans eat are delicate snowflakes
Tue Apr 17, 2018, 09:01 AM
Apr 2018

Tomatoes are at the top of that list. I can grow tomatillos, onions and kale and not need to do much of anything to them. But tomatoes you have to fertilize, weed meticulously, cage or tie up, look out for constant insect pressure, fertilize again, spray for molds and mildew, don't forget calcium and they end up getting late blight and early blght anyway.

Thanks to Bonnie Plants, Wal Mart, K Mart and other big box stores, the US is now covered with the late blight tomato virus, which is also the potato virus. Their hunger for profit ensured their infected tomatoes were sold throughout the US. The virus, which is also the potato virus, overwinters in potatoes, guaranteeing vectors of contamination for decades. When the big box stores were told their Bonnie tomatoe plants were infected, they reduced the price and sold them as a sale item. Now just about everyone gets the virus on their tomatoes.

You maybe diligent about reducing infection but your neighbor isn't. So the only real defense is to constantly replant determinate varieties. Thanks Bonnie...it's great how corporate greed destroys most everything it touches.

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