North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>]

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