Whoever I ask this muddy summer, the answer is always the same.

The situation in the bed and in the field is bad, say hobby gardeners and farmers who are friends, the harvest will probably fall into the water this year.

One of them told me last week in desperation that he had lost all tomatoes and most of the vegetables: rotten or relentlessly eaten by “myriads of merciless nudibranchs,” he wrote to me.

Andreas Frey

Freelance writer in the science of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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A related winemaker I recently spoke to is also affected. The damp weather hit him twice as hard because he switched his business to organic this year of all times. Up to June it was still going reasonably well, despite the cold and wet spring. But then immediately after the flowering in early summer, days of heavy rain followed, which did not allow the leaves to dry out, which promoted fungal diseases. The so-called debris withered or turned into mud - more than half of the harvest was destroyed. The fault was the dreaded raw rot that attacked unripe grapes. Behind this is the mold

Botrytis cinerea

, against which no remedy can help in organic farming.

Now he has to be careful that the fungus does not penetrate the wood, said the winemaker.

Otherwise the whole rod would die off, and then the coming year would also be perdu.

This darned mold has my tomatoes and basil plants on my conscience, even though they are protected under the balcony roof.

Especially the tomatoes, the seeds of which I obtained directly from Italy: No fruit is red yet, but a veil of mold covers the plant like a spider's web.

And the basil, otherwise as big as my daughters, is puny and lost on the floor.

Worry about cucumbers and apple trees

I have probably never learned so much about plant diseases as I did this summer. Most people fear and know the downy mildew,

probably also

botrytis

, but probably less known is the

Didymella

mushroom, which is currently threatening the cucumber harvest in Lower Bavaria and Lower Franconia. It is said that there will be no shortage of pickled cucumbers - so there is still hope for all friends of the hearty snack. More problematic, however, is a notifiable plant disease that has just been detected in Lindau on Lake Constance: fire blight, triggered by the highly infectious bacterium

Erwinia amylovora,

which was brought into Europe from America

, which endangers apple, pear trees and other rose plants.

Once infected, shoots and branches die off - in the end, only quick pruning back into healthy wood or even clearing helps.

Fire blight affects plants in a similar way to raw rot if it is warm and humid during the flowering period and shortly afterwards.

In order to save what can still be saved, the hobby gardeners and farmers are now begging for stable and dry summer weather.

A few weeks of sun and warmth are important, they say in unison, especially in the south and west they don't need rain for a long time.

A few dry days are behind us, but it is unlikely that the last third of August, including September, will bring us persistent good weather.

The lows have a preference for Central Europe this summer.

The damp weather has something good, however: I have never before harvested so much high-quality mint. Since the middle of May I've only been drinking mint drinks: fresh with water, elderberry syrup and ice cubes, brewed as tea and, very Hemingway-style, as mojito. It's time the stuff finally died.