Week 11 Newsletter

This week, we received a visit from the widely respected professor Tom Zitter, along with Cornell Cooperative Extension agents John Mishanec, Laura McDermott, and Chuck Bornt. Tom is a researcher at Cornell University, where he heads the Zitter Lab and Field Program, which deals with the biology and management of pathogens of fresh market vegetables, with emphasis on potatoes, tomatoes, and cucurbits. As I have written to you before, we have been working with Cornell for many years conducting tomato, potato, and cucurbit trials, as well as soil management. For three years we participated in a trial to help assess the quality of late blight-resistant tomato varieties.

Their visit was a good opportunity to check up on the health of our tomato plants. Unfortunately, due to the misconception that hot and dry weather doesn’t favor late blight, this farmer had slacked off on the spraying of copper in the last two weeks. It did not take Tom very long to discover the first lesions indicating that late blight has started to fester on our late planting of tomatoes. It was a blessing to have him and Chuck visit us that day, as we think we might still be in time to lessen the infection by going back to a more careful spraying regime.

Four years ago, our local extension agent, Chuck Bornt, asked us if we had some space in our tomato section to add about 400 plants of about 50 different late blight-resistant tomato varieties. They had no funding at the time but, with the cooperation of growers like Roxbury Farm, and the ongoing concern that late blight would one day have a catastrophic impact on tomato production (well, that proved to be a foresight!), we went ahead. Those 50 different varieties were trialed at Roxbury Farm; by one other grower in the western part of the state; and at the Thompson Vegetable Research Farm at Freeville, N.Y.

I remember Chuck telling me that he was biased against one variety and he was hesitant to include it in the mix, as it produced a strong indeterminate tomato plant. Tomatoes are classified as determinate, semi determinate, and indeterminate. This terminology applies to how the tomatoes ripen on the vine. Indeterminate tomatoes ripen one cluster at a time. The Juliet and Golden Rave tomatoes you receive are both indeterminate, making for a very tall tomato plant. As you can imagine, trellising such plants is not without difficulty. The earlier planted Juliets have reached well above their six-foot trellis, with the latest vine growth falling over the last strings. The weight of such plants, in combination with strong winds, can cause the trellis to collapse, which occurred in one section last Saturday with some of the Golden Raves. Needless to say, commercial growers demand determinate lines from their breeders. These plants are usually around four feet tall and the tomatoes ripen almost simultaneously on the whole plant.
We told Chuck we are not afraid of some tall plants if we think the flavor and quality are worth it, so he included it.

At such a stage in variety trials, crops have just a number; only when they are released on a commercial basis do they get a proper name. As we always look for the latest improvement of disease and insect control in seed stock, our current red potato is still named NY 129. Many of the late blight- (Phytophthora) tolerant tomatoes in the trial of 2005 were bred by Prof. Randy Gardner of NCSU. He created the well-known Mountain series that have good tolerance against Alternaria (early blight) and Fusarium. We have grown the Mountain Fresh and Mountain Pride, which are large beefsteak types, but many of you preferred a less firm and sweeter tomato.

Once the 50 varieties matured, we looked for combined disease resistance, flavor, earliness, fruit size, firmness, color, smoothness, and crack resistance. A tomato can be late blight-resistant, but if it is very sensitive to Septoria (which was not part of the research until recently) or without good flavor, we still have little interest in growing it. One variety stood out from the pack, literally, as it grew to six feet tall. The vigorous plant produced a small round tomato – due to the size and shape of the tomato, it was named Ping Pong by our own Johannes (coming out of the always creative and imaginative mind of a then 15-year-old). Best of all, according to other trials, it is virtually resistant to late blight. We were very excited about it, and asked Chuck if he could secure 100 seeds of the Ping Pong variety so we could start delivering those tomatoes to the membership. Every year since then we have had to pull some strings, as there wasn’t much of a seed supply available. Word got out that Ping Pong was a winner; maybe not for large commercial growers, but certainly for specialty crop farmers like ourselves, and possibly for home gardeners, too, as its flavor is fantastic. Nevertheless, we have been able to add a small supply of Ping Pong tomatoes to your share each year by securing about 200 seeds from Cornell.

Last year, we wrote a letter of support to help Tom apply for a large grant to develop Septoria-, early blight-, and late blight-resistant tomato varieties. Though the money granted to Cornell is much less than requested, we will still hold the first trial by next season. This kind of work is greatly underappreciated by the scientific world, and therefore hugely underfunded. Rumor has it that North Carolina State University is pressuring Randy to spend less time on developing new varieties and more on molecular marking (researching what gene is responsible for what trait).
This winter Ping Pong received its commercial name: Mountain Magic. We were disappointed, but we understood – it is Randy’s creation after all. We can still call it Ping Pong, and so does Tom. On the Zitter Lab website homepage you’ll find a picture of Mountain Magic, with the caption “a.k.a. Ping Pong.” Thanks, Tom, and thanks to all the folks at the extension service for providing farmers with the latest developments and innovations in agriculture.

Jean-Paul