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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] tomato blight

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] tomato blight
  • Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:45:28 -0400


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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