The July 24, 2009 Hartford Courant report confirms late blight in 6 of 8 counties in Connecticut – New London and Middlesex have, so far, been spared. According to Joan Allen, pathologist at the University of Connecticut Plant Diagnostic Lab, here are the key points for home gardeners to remember:
If your tomato leaves, stems, and buds don't look something like the healthy plants depicted in the photos at the right … and rather look more like tomatoes depicted at the Late blight on tomato site at Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, some of your veggie growing dreams could be in for a dashing. Take the time now to study these photos … then head out to your plants and check the stems for sections of dark brown with white fungal growth, and check the leaves for brown sections with underside areas housing tiny white spores. If you see anything that looks like the photos in the link above you could very well have late blight. This is a serious fungal threat, not just to tomatoes, but to all nightshades – eggplant, peppers, potatoes. How big of a threat? Late blight is the disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine according to a fact sheet put out by Cornell Horticulture.
joenesgarden feed
Delicious
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Google Bookmarks
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Technorati Favorites
Twitter
Yahoo! Buzz
1 comment
No trackbacks
RSS 2.0
Bloglines
Live
MyYahoo
Netvibes
Newsgator
Rojo