Posted on 07/13/2009 8:06:53 AM PDT by Bulwinkle
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.
"Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States," said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University's extension center in Riverhead, New York.....
This year's cool, wet weather created perfect conditions for the disease. "Hopefully, it will turn sunny," McGrath said. "If we get into our real summer hot dry weather, this disease is going to slow way down."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
My tomato plants are doing just fine here in southeast PA. I don’t grow potatoes.
Has this catastrophe been included in any of the Global Warming scenarios? Blight from cooling?
Gee, I don’t remember that being mentioned.
Oklahomans will be glad to send some of our 100 degree days north and east.
How are the sunspots doing? Any show up yet?
Both tomatoes and potatoes are in the nightshade family. Hope your plants stay healthy.
We'll send you a jar of mildewey PA basement air in return.
Since Maine’s Aroostook county supplies most of the potatoes for the East coast, this blight is a big deal. Expect the price to go up this fall.
Careful! I think you need a permit from the EPA and the USPS in order to be able to ship PA basement air! :)
Because of the cool temperatures, my tomato plants are about a month behind in development. Same thing happened last year.
They’ll link it in their demented minds.
This story ahs a photo of what it looks like on a tomato plant :::
Symptoms of late blight appear as large (at least nickel-sized) olive-green to brown spots on leaves with slightly fuzzy white fungal growth on the underside when conditions have been humid or wet. Sometimes the lesion border is yellow or has a water-soaked appearance. Leaf lesions begin as tiny, irregularly shaped brown spots. Brown to blackish lesions also develop on upper stems. Firm, brown spots develop on tomato fruit.
http://www.timesargus.com/article/20090712/FEATURES07/907120301/1016/FEATURES07
Didn't you get the memo? It's not Global Warming any more, it's Climate Change. So any variation in temperature is now due to human intervention. Because we all know that the global temperature was a balmy 70 degrees F every day until the internal combustion engine was invented.
Ole Okie: “How are the sunspots doing? Any show up yet?”???
A nice one showed up[#1024]...but faded.
See this article: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/12/ken-tapping-still-no-sign-of-the-next-cycle/
My early planted tomato plants have something that looks like this..I’m talking CA here. They were purchased from nursery about 1ft tall. Now that it seems to have warmed up here..maybe it will be contained.
Most of my tomato plants have gone dormant due to the high temps.
Looks like we will have 5 days of sun here in CT, so hopefully it doesn’t show up in my garden (been checking each evening after work).
Are all nightshade plants affected? I have bell and chile peppers as well.
I’m glad to hear about your tomatoes being a month behind. Makes me feel better because my tomatoes are also very small and at least a month behind. Maybe there is hope for my tomatoes yet.
Really? I’ve always thought tomatoes loved the heat. My plants do the best when it’s high 90s and humid. Just have to water the crap out of them in the evenings.
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