While the Mad River Valley's Gaylord and Santa Davida Farms have not seen any signs of the blight on their crops as of this writing, other well-known Vermont farmers have been hit with the telltale black slimy leaves and lesions on the stems of their plants that are sure signs of impending crop destruction. Wendy and Jean Palthy of Tunbridge Farm watched a near overnight transformation of their tomatoes from lush, green and loaded with fruit to black piles of dead foliage that they had to quickly burn to reduce the possibility of the spores spreading to other nearby farms.
| Tips for home gardeners from Ann Hazenlrigg, UVM Plant Diagnostic Clinic. • It seems like the blight has gotten all around the state in the last storm and is causing plants to die quickly. • Tomatoes seem to be hit worse, but some suspect potatoes will go down soon. • Spores are everywhere and pruning off foliage that is blighted will really have no effect because there are thousands just floating in the breeze! If it would become hot and dry, things would settle down and the new blights would slow; however, given our weather forecasts, we are likely to see more blighting. • If gardeners don't see the blight in their plants, they could protect them with a fungicide (Bravo or coppers for organic) on a five to seven day schedule, but the these may not keep everything protected if inoculum is high and if some infections have already started. • Once the grower does have late blight, it will likely take out the whole crop. Best to pull up plants and put them under a tarp so they all die quickly. Gardeners can also bag and landfill or bury in a hole! Other options are to till under. Don't just leave plants standing because it will provide lots of inoculum for everyone else! • The disease will not overwinter on stakes, cages or dead tissue, so that is good news for tomato growers. It will only be a problem next year if more storms blow in spores, if there are contaminated plants brought in from the South, or if there are infected tubers that have overwintered. So, rotation is not that important for this disease in tomatoes, although it is for the other fungal diseases of tomatoes. • The only place the disease can overwinter is on infected tubers. So if potatoes still look fine (as many do) protect with copper or other fungicide. • If the disease does get started in the potatoes, mow the plants BEFORE it gets very widespread, let all the tissue die (so spores die) and allow tubers to harden/suberize for a week and then harvest. If the plants were allowed to just become really blighted, there could be a lot of stem cankers and this could grow down to the tubers and infect them. Mow when disease gets started and all should be fine. Tubers may be a little smaller but they should be okay. Discard any that look bad at harvest. |
According to Aaron Locker who is currently working with the Vermont Foodbank to prepare the land at the Kingsbury Farm, there is not much that can be done about the blight once you have it. According to Locker, it has been a kind of "perfect storm with the weather and the sudden interest in gardening that was brought on by the economy." The late blight has been linked to tomato seedlings sold at big box stores throughout the Northeast this past spring. The plants reportedly came from large growers in Georgia and Alabama.
"Some people feel that because they grew their tomatoes from seed their will not get the blight. However, no plants are protected from the blight spores which can travel up to 40 miles through the air and do their most destructive work in cold and rainy conditions," explained Robin McDermott, founder of the Mad River Valley Localvores.
Locker, who experienced the late blight once before while farming in central New York, says that this particular strain seems to be more interested in tomatoes than potatoes. However, there are reports of some potatoes succumbing to the late blight, which was responsible for the great Irish potato famine in the mid-1800s.
"While people will not be dying of hunger because of this blight, the financial impact on farmers is substantial. For many diversified vegetable farmers, their tomato crops are like gold and will make the difference between a good year and one where they lose money. The farmers who have not yet lost their tomatoes are walking a fine line between pricing their tomatoes based on the demand and keeping prices consistent for their loyal customers. Regardless, consumers can expect to see higher prices for tomatoes from most farmers who know that they could be just a day or two away from losing their entire crop to the blight," McDermott explained.
Jen Soucey of the Mad River Garden Center concurs with Locker that there is little that can be done to stop late blight once it infects a tomato patch. While she said that home gardeners can try to slow the disease by spraying an organic copper substance, at best it will only slow down the inevitable -- that the plants need to be removed and destroyed.
According to Dr. Vern Grubinger of the UVM Agricultural Extension, "Late blight needs living plant tissue to survive, so infected tomato plants should be destroyed as soon as the disease is identified. In small gardens, this means removing plants in trash bags and sending them to the landfill." Grubinger cautions that gardeners should "not put plants in the compost pile just in case some portion is protected from the elements and makes it through the winter."
"It is important that all gardeners take appropriate action to assure that the late blight does not return next year. If potatoes become infected, cut off the tops and wait to dig the tubers for two to three weeks. This will allow the potato skins to toughen up underground and will also allow time for the vines to completely die which will limit the number of spores on the soil surface. If the blight has not gotten into the actual tubers, they should still be edible although, according to Pete Johnson of Pete's Greens, the potatoes may not store for as long and if any potatoes do have the blight it could affect other root vegetables that are being stored alongside the potatoes," McDermott explained.
With so many people taking up vegetable gardening for the first time this year, getting late blight can be especially discouraging. As Dan Barber, chef of Blue Hills Restaurant in New York City, noted in a recent <MI>New York Times<D> op-ed piece, there are a lot of lessons to learn from this agricultural disaster. Barber suggests that purchasing starter plants from local growers is as important as buying local food itself. He observes that when anyone starts a garden at home, no matter how small, they become a part of a larger agricultural network that binds them to other gardeners and farmers. Barber says, "The tomato plant on the windowsill, the backyard garden and the industrial tomato farm are, to be a bit reductive about it, one very large farm. As we begin to grow more of our own food, we need to reacquaint ourselves with plant pathology and understand that what we grow, and how we grow it, affects everyone else."
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