The Walmart in our rural community started buying tomatoes from local farmers in Grainger Co TN. Oh! so good. They taste like homegrown because they are homegrown. I love growing tomatoes and so do neighbors. However, the deer, diseases and pests make it a real challenge. The natives tell me that forty years ago, there were no deer, diseases or insect pest for their gardens. That’s a good thing because if the farmers of yesteryear had the pests of today, they would have starved.
Now I hear that gov’t is bringing back elk to the state. Does anyone know if elk eat tomatoes?
I have no idea about the deer population in your area years ago or now so I won’t comment on that. I would doubt there were no deer years ago that were garden pests though there may have been less. People used to plant things that helped repel deer from gardens.
As to the insects and diseases I would bet they had the same if not more issues years ago, except they knew how to garden better so they had those things more under control. The thing is people were serious about gardening about the time the gardeners of 40 years ago were born, many needed that garden to survive not so many years before that- so they planned very carefully, they knew how to compost good dirt and exactly how to work the ground and were particular about where they planted things, rotated crops, companion planting, and planting certain flowers that would help deal with disease and insects. Because they were serious gardeners they had more knowledge in their head than even they knew, many things they learned as small children helping their parents with the garden.
There are people who plant things together or apart because their family always did, not realizing that is one way to deal with bugs bothering things or not bothering them. The way they made their own compost and worked their soil had a lot to do with keeping disease under control.
People depending on seeds or growing certain varieties to keep pests at bay is a very recent thing, before that chemicals were commonly used to keep pest and disease at bay- the really old time gardeners before that had to do things in a way to keep the pests from starving them.
Gardeners of 40 years ago had both the knowledge of experts before chemicals were available and they had a variety of chemicals that they felt were harmless so no problem using them freely. Talk about a double whammy on the pest and disease.