Diversity and Sustainablility

We got an important lesson on diversity and sustainability from our tomato yard this year. I planted three kinds of tomatoes this spring, yellow pear, for snacking Brandywine, for slicing, and Romas for saucing. We had a great spring and everything was growing really well.

Then, like the rest of the country we entered a drought. The sudden drop in water let to my plants succumbing to blossom end rot (caused by a calcium deficiency from not having the consistent water to bring up the minerals).

I started watering more regularly, and all the tomato plants seemed to bounce back really well, with the following fruits being free from any end rot. That is, except for my Romas. My Roma tomato plants just couldn’t recover, and over a few weeks, every single one of the plants died except for one plant in the front yard that I had planted later than the others.

I love the delicious tomatoes we’ve been eating this year, snacking on the little yellow ones and sighing over delicious salted slices of the Brandywines. I’m disappointed not to have any tomatoes for making sauce, but It really gave me a concrete example of how important it is to have diversity in our food system in order for it to be sustainable.

The potato blight which led to the Irish potato famine was exacerbated by the fact that most people were growing the same variety of potato, so everyone’s potatoes got the disease, and a million people died of starvation. This is one reason we garden at home–to grow different varieties of fruits and vegetables than the monocrops grown by commercial agriculture.  We aren’t going to save the world with our backyard garden, but it is important to be aware of the greater issues in the international food system that so many of us are completely reliant on, and share that information where we can.