[NAFEX] tomato blight
Road's End Farm
organic87 at frontiernet.net
Mon Jul 27 08:45:28 EDT 2009
On Jul 27, 2009, at 6:49 AM, Alan Haigh wrote:
> Yup, the media has been abuzz about tainted tomato plants and the
> blight issue here in the northeast but I doubt any scientific
> connection exists between the big box plants (seeds?) and the early
> late blight this year. There has just been an incredible amount of
> rain. I would expect my late blight to be early with 2 straight
> months of rain in the double digits with inadequate sun between
> storms.
There has indeed been a great deal of rain. However, no amount of rain
will produce late blight if the spores aren't present. The disease
generally takes some time to get this far north; it does travel, but
not so fast that it's generally present in New York etc. in June and
early July; that's why it's called "late" blight. It isn't only the
media going on about tainted plants, it's Cornell and other plant
disease experts.
>
> Of course my property has had early blight for well over a decade so
> I'm pretty sanguine at this point although my neighbor gardener says
> the latest blight is a new strain
Early blight and late blight are two distinctly different diseases.
Early blight progresses slowly enough that plants infected with it will
often successfully produce a crop; it's much less of a problem.
--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly
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