Tomato blight. Next year?
Late blight arrived early this year, damaging tomato and potato crops in 13 states on the East Coast.
Organic gardeners and home gardeners were particularly hard hit, while commercial farms, already applying fungicides, stepped up their applications and survived.
Hundreds of tomato growers pulled plants before they harvested a single tomato, placed them in black plastic bags and in the trash, headed for the landfill. No recycling or composting for these infected plants.
But what about next year? Will the blight return? And is there anything we can do in our gardens now to prevent it?
Good questions, but there are no answers yet, according to Jon Traunfeld of the University of Maryland extension service.
"We don't know what strain we've got," he said of the fungal infection. "If it is the kind we've seen before typically on the Eastern United States, it can't over-winter in the soil. It only lives on plant material and once that plant material dies, it is gone."
The answer is to make sure you clean your gardens of any plant debris so there is no chance the fungus has a place to hide for the winter.
And next spring, grow your own seedlings or buy plants grown locally so that you don't re-introduce the fungus.
But it is possible that the blight, which appears to have spread from the plants purchased and sold by big box stores, might be a variety that can over-winter.
Botany labs at Cornell and in North Carolina are trying to determine that now.
"Even plant pathologists who have been around a long time haven't seen anything like this," said Traunfeld.
"It could be a whole new ball game," said Traunfeld.
Stay tuned here. When the plant doctors have answers, we will report them on Garden Variety.
Comments
I was also warned that if you have potatoes from this year that overwinter in the ground, you should dispose of any shoots they send out, as they may still be carrying the pathogen.
However, as I understand it, the spread this year of blight was kind of a "perfect storm" event. An unusually wet spring, coupled with the big box store's capacity for wide plant distribution.
Ok, the truth is, after being devastated by blight, I'm just keeping all my digits crossed that it won't happen again next year.
Me, too!!!!--Susan
Posted by: Kerry | September 14, 2009 2:13 PM
Hope that it gets better for you, in the East next year. It is not nice when you were looking forward to having nice tomato's and getting none. Sorry to hear that.
Dan and Deanna "Marketing Unscrambled"
Posted by: Dan and Deanna | September 15, 2009 2:54 AM
can tomato's from infected plants still be eaten if they ripen And look o.k.
Yes. If the tomato looks good, it is! But if it has uncommon bruises or brown spots, feed it to the disposal. Susan
Posted by: michael | September 22, 2009 11:18 PM
I planted my first garden in the NC mountains near Boone this year, and was very excited and how well everything was growing in the virgin soil. I had added peat and black cow to improve the soil and planted several types of tomato plants from a big box store. Suddenly just as the tomatoes began to ripen the blight took over and I was only able to rescue a hand full of tomatoes. I was sick! What to do next year?
Posted by: LINDA | September 30, 2009 3:53 PM
Re: Kerry's comment about overwintered potatoes in the ground - this is interesting, because I always plant my tomatoes in the same spot, where my potatoes have never been, and I've never gotten blight.
It makes me wonder, though, about potato crop rotation - will overwintered potatoes spread blight to any crop planted in the same spot, or does it just affect tomatoes?
Nancy, I am no expert, but the strain infecting the tomatoes and potatoes is the same. And it can overwinter in potato flesh. The advice is to dig them up. It could be this summer was a blip, a perfect storm of weather conditions and some infected plants from the same wholesaler. But I would err on the side of caution.
Posted by: Nancy @PlantAvenue | October 1, 2009 10:11 AM