Blight endangers your backyard tomatoes, too

Milford — Late tomato blight is widespread in the Northeast this summer including Pike County, according to Master Gardener Sue Conrad of the Penn State Cooperative Extension Horticulture Department. The blight has been confirmed in only three specimens brought into the clinic, but it’s assumed to be widespread in Pike and surrounding areas. Pike County doesn’t have a huge agricultural segment, but there are many home gardeners. A gardener and her husband in Shohola said they planted their first tomatoes and potatoes last summer, and had good crops. “This year, when we planted tomatoes, they soon turned black from the bottom leaves of the plant, spread up the stem and other leaves, and soon the whole plant died. It quickly spread to the other tomatoes, and within the week, they were all dead,” she said, adding, “I bought my tomatoes from Walmart, but I don’t blame them for the disease. They didn’t know the plants were infected.” The blight also spread to potatoes, and destroyed them. The couple had started the potatoes from their own ‘old’ potatoes from last year that were okay. “It broke my heart when the blight spread to my potatoes,” said the gardener. “I had planted some two dozen plants, and it spread to them, and they died very quickly after catching it. I’m just so grateful we can go to the stores and buy food, and are not dependent for the food we grow like they were in 1840’s Ireland,” she added, referring to reports by the Cornell University that this was the same disease. “Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the U.S.,” said Meg McGrath, of Cornell University on its Web site. “One source of late blight in New York has been traced to tomato plants imported to garden centers from production facilities in the South. If tomatoes were started from seed by a gardener or a farmer in the Northeast, plants are unlikely to be infected, at least initially,” she added. Early symptoms include brown spots on stems. They begin small and firm, and then quickly enlarge, and white fungal growth develops under moist conditions that leads to a soft rot collapsing the stem. Sometimes the border of the spot is yellow or has a water-soaked appearance. Firm, brown spots develop on tomato fruit. The wet summer has produced ideal conditions for the disease to occur. Penn State Extension said there is no cure for the disease once it has taken hold of a plant. The best thing to do is destroy infected plans by burning them or disposing of them in trash. Some fungicides can be effective to an extent, according to the Extension, recommending using fungicides that contain mancozeb (Bonide mancozeb flowable with zinc concentrate) or chlorothalonil (Daconil, Bonide Fungonil, Ortho Max Garden Disease Control). A Sussex County organic farm has used their own ‘recipe’ including compost tea, garlic and red pepper very effectively against the disease, according to Linda Grinthal of Sunset View Farms.