I was listening to You bet Your Garden this morning and heard a bit of bad gardening news: a really bad case of Late Blight has infested the east coast. As of today it's primarily in New York and New England but has been identified as far west as Ohio and down into the Carolinas. "So what?" you might ask, well this apparently it has the potential to devastate tomato and potato plants (amongst other related plants) for both home gardeners and commercial growers. This is the same disease that cause the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800's.
It's recommended that you inspect your tomatoes and potatoes daily and if you find any of your tomatoes are infected with late blight to destroy the plant and bring samples into local government agricultural labs to ensure that it's tracked. I just checked my plants and so far nothing that looks like the pictures. (Pictures of late blight symptoms) Good luck to all!
Here's a piece of the YBYG article:
And late blight spreads like wildfire on a windy day in bone-dry weather. If people don’t promptly remove and destroy infected plants the spores will travel with the wind to the next garden—or farm. A single spore can travel many miles. And the cool, damp weather that plagued the affected parts of the country throughout much of June provided the ‘perfect’ conditions for this nasty actor to spread rapidly. Oh and just to make SURE you don’t sleep well tonight, this is the earliest and most widespread it’s ever appeared.
The Associated Press has done an excellent job of reporting on this potential crisis. According to their story of July 3rd, the disease appears to have originated in tomato plants shipped to ‘Big Box’ stores on the east Coast—specifically Lowe’s, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Kmart. Infected plants were found at almost every store that was checked, so be especially vigilant if you or a neighbor got plants from such a store.
If you grew your own plants from seed or got them from a purely local grower—who didn’t mix their stock with bulk-purchased plants—your only risk is the spores blowing into your garden. If you’re in a community garden or other ‘shared’ situation, make sure your fellow growers are informed, and agree up front that any infected plants will be immediately destroyed.
Full YBYG Article:
http://www.gardensalive.com/article_mcgrath.asp?ai=1&bhcd2=1247942148
More info from Cornell University:
http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/
Can I eat any part of the tomato that is OK? So if the rot spot is cut off, will the fungus affect me if I eat the rest of the raw tomato? I don't seem to have many that are clean. Can I make refrigerator pickles from the green ones with spots as well?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words Jennifer! I appreciate all the comments. I've learned a lot this year and I hope to make both my garden and blog better for the 2010 season. keep stopping by and commenting please!
ReplyDeleteRichard:
ReplyDeleteI did a little research on your behalf and I found some anecdotal evidence that it is OK to eat the tomatoes off a blighted plant, but some recommend against it. This was the most authorative answer I could find:
"Short answer: They’re unappealing but, if you cut off the blighted portion, they are safe to eat. That’s according to John Mishanec, an Albany-based pest-management specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension, who was interviewed by my colleague Chris Churchill for a story published July 21. To combat the spread of blight, he advised placing infected plants in plastic bags and throwing them away. Composting the plants is a mistake, he said, because it allows spores to continue the spread of the disease."
Hope that helps! Best wishes.