You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster

[groovedaddy]

IF the hardship of growing vegetables and fruits in the Northeast has made anything clear, it’s that the list of what can go wrong in the field is a very long one.

We wait all year for warmer weather and longer days. Once we get them, it seems new problems for farmers rise to the surface every week: overnight temperatures plunging close to freezing, early disease, aphid attacks. Another day, another problem.

The latest trouble is the explosion of late blight, a plant disease that attacks potatoes and tomatoes. Late blight appears innocent enough at first — a few brown spots here, some lesions there — but it spreads fast. Although the fungus isn’t harmful to humans, it has devastating effects on tomatoes and potatoes grown outdoors. Plants that appear relatively healthy one day, with abundant fruit and vibrant stems, can turn toxic within a few days. (See the Irish potato famine, caused by a strain of the fungus.)

Most farmers in the Northeast, accustomed to variable conditions, have come to expect it in some form or another. Like a sunburn or a mosquito bite, you’ll probably be hit by late blight sooner or later, and while there are steps farmers can take to minimize its damage and even avoid it completely, the disease is almost always present, if not active.

But this year is turning out to be different — quite different, according to farmers and plant scientists. For one thing, the disease appeared much earlier than usual. Late blight usually comes, well, late in the growing season, as fungal spores spread from plant to plant. So its early arrival caught just about everyone off guard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09barber.html?th&emc=th

[Warpy]

1. It might be a result of the odd summer the east has had

especially New England. While we've roasted here in the southwest, our monsoon season having fizzled and a hot high pressure area camped over the Four Corners keeping us miserable, they've been cooler and wetter, perfect conditions for the blight to occur.

FWIW, I never experienced the blight when I lived in New England and had big organic veggie gardens. As long as it warmed up enough to set fruit, my tomatoes were gorgeous and my potatoes abundant, even in late August when the mornings were starting to have a bit of a nip to them.