Jul 10, 2009 6:54 pm US/Eastern
'Late Blight' Terrorizing Local Tomato Farmers
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
150 years ago, it caused the Irish potato famine. These days, the so-called "late blight" is causing major crop concerns for local growers of tomatoes. Experts have advice for home gardeners.
There's a blight in the lush organic fields of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, and it's killing hundreds of plants that could have produced three tons of tomatoes.
"It's just a disappointment not to have the many thousands of pounds of tomatoes we may have expected," Stone Barns farm manager Jack Algiere says.
Algiere says the "late blight" is a fungus whose spores are spread by the wind. It's affected farm operations large and small, including a community garden in Putnam County.
"It's such a fast-acting fungal disease that, within a few days, the tomatoes are beginning to look really disgusting," Dianne Olsen, of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Service, says.
Olsen says gardeners should look for tell-tale lesions on the stems and leaves of tomato plants, and the obvious damage to the fruit itself.
Putnam gardener George Joiner tried to save his plants with a fungicide spray, but it only made things worse.
"I sprayed and came back two days later," Joiner says. "It was like I was feeding the blight, as opposed to preventing it."
Many experts say infected plants can't be saved, and they should be bagged in plastic and thrown out. Do not put them in the compost heap, because the spores will simply populate through all the compost.
The farmers at Stone Barns are carefully noting which tomato varieties are surviving the blight and which aren't. On one side of the aisle, the "white wonders" have been essentially wiped out. On the other, though, the "big zebras" are doing just fine.
Experts say June's wet weather is to blame for the blight. They're concerned that it will also take a toll on the potato crop.
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