I need opinions,please

[carolyn137]

I read many but not all of the threads about disease questions here since there are others who can also do that, yes,sometimes I do answer questions but here's what I wonder about.

Growing up on a farm, we call it a truck farm here in the east,we had many many acres of tomatoes,and my brother who is 3 years younger than I am worked hard in those fields.

But back then, and I'm talking the early 40's, there were no significant diseases of our tomatoes at all.All that we had were Colorado Potato Beetles,and dad would give us a can of kerosene to pick them off,which was a problem since if you know CPB's they act dead and fall to the ground.We got a penny for each one in the can. And be sure to look under the leaves and crush those orange egg clusters.

Dad had a backpack sprayer straps that went over his shoulders with stuff in it, and well I remember him spraying the summer and winter squash,but not the tomatoes.Maybe he did spray the tomatoes,b/c remembering and fact are two different issues.

We had many peach orchards that were there when my grandfather bought the farm,and three of them had been planted by the Shakers when they owned the land. and pear tree and plum trees also and I know he sprayed them each Spring.

Yes we also had BER, I didn't know that what it was called back then. Dad just said to pick off the ones with black bottoms and to toss them between the rows.

The above was in the 40's when I was a kid to the time I graduated from HS.

But when I moved back East from Denver where I was teaching and doing research,and that was in 1982 everything was different as to diseses.I met the local Cornell Coop agent,a wonderful lady who had been suggested I do so by my farmer friend charlie. She wanted to use my then large field to train others as she had been trained by Dr.Tom Zitter at Cornell, known world wide for his expertise of tomato diseases in how to diagnose diseases.She had two interns she was training,and I trailed after them as she pointed out the various bacterial and fungal diseases and how to diagnose them,and I followed with a notebook and made notes every time they came which was once a week for the whole season.

And that's where and how I learned about tomato diseases.When I was at the original Garden web I contacted the coop ext headquarters in many different states and asked them to rank from worst to least the diseases that were prevalent in their areas,and that turned out to be a very good idea since those in the south have many soilborne and other diseases that we in the north seldom see unless plants are ordered by nurseries and individuals to be shipped up from the south and are already infected/.


Back to now and asking what has happened between the late 30's through the 40's to 1982 and forward..

Why are there so many diseases now,so many pests and critters that can destroy theplants.When I read what some here are using now it confounds me.

But the larger question for me is why was it there were so few diseases and pests back then and now so many.

Any opinions are very welcome.

Carolyn, and yes,I have some ideas but I'd rather hear from others first.

[Worth1]

That is easy there are more things shipped across the land than there used to be.
at one time everything was localized and now it isn't.
We are getting fruit from south America in our winter ans they are getting fruit from us in their winter.
Then there are the big box stored that have all but killed the local nurseries that once supplied the folks around them.
Instead of the Colombian exchange you could call it the Big Box exchange.

Worth

[AlittleSalt]

I'm going to step out on an unsteady branch here - The human population has grown so much causing more pollution. I think pollution causes diseases. Over time, diseases start becoming immune to treatments and they begin evolving from there. That's my thoughts.

[Country Breeze]

I believe Worth is certainly on to something. To add to what he said, modern Farming practices changed during that time as well. Soil erosion, huge monoculture crops, and various pesticides misused, also contributed imo.

Pesticide resistance, poor soil conditions, habitat loss for beneficial insects and animals seems to play a large role. The Pheasants and Quail are no longer in any numbers to help control the insects. Giant monoculture crops can blow diseases for miles.

[Keiththibodeaux]

Here is Louisiana, with the mild winters, heat and humidity in summer we have always had more than our share of insects, including quite a few tropical ones that have popped up. So yes, we have more bugs, but the bugs (and weeds) are also more resistant to pesticides.

Carolyn, my Dad was born in 1932 and worked the family farm till 1950. At 85 he laughs at the organic regimen and talked about how they put DDT in my grandmother's old stockings and walked up and down the 20 acres shaking it on plants, and getting it all over them in the process. I try to explain to him, that our bodies have to contend with far more pollutants and population today. He'll here non of it. He still grows a garden, and will whip out whatever pesticide needed in a heartbeat. And yes, he considerable outgrows me and my mostly organic regimen.

[KarenO]

Agree with Worth: a few disease ridden suppliers such as Bonnie plants trucking their poor quality transplants all over the continent.
People used to grow their own starts from seed.
As well, If your family was anything like mine, they had no patience for cruddy diseased plants. They didn't try to nurse them along and spread disease in the process the way people do today, spraying blight infested plants with milk and god knows what.etc etc allowing the spores to just fly for miles, they hauled them out and burned them because they had common sense.
Also, people grew what grew well in their area and didn't try to grow crops unsuited to the climate. if turnips grew well, you grew turnips and you didn't have time or energy to fuss around babying peppers in a northern garden. You had kids to feed and potatoes and turnips were a better crop for winter storage.
commercial monoculture plays a huge role as well.\Lots of reasons combined I think but I agree it is concerning for the future.
KarenO

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

I'm going to step out on an unsteady branch here - The human population has grown so much causing more pollution. I think pollution causes diseases. Over time, diseases start becoming immune to treatments and they begin evolving from there. That's my thoughts.

Salt on a microbiological stand point on disease and pollution that simply isn't so.
Our environment now in cities is a thousand times cleaner than it was 400 years ago.
The movies dont show it.
Take a moat for example.
The movies show someone falling into water.
In real life that water would be full of dead animals and human sewage including floaters and any other household waste.
You dont want to fall in the moat.
The streets were full of sewage and dead animals running down the street when it rained.
Nobody knew what a germ was, it was an act of some devil a witch or some god that caused sickness.
The only way to stop it was kill the witches or sacrifice.
In real life a virus will evolve to not outright kill a person fast.
It does the virus no good to kill the host before it can spread to others.
Many of not most of our common viruses came from pigs to chickens to us.
The black plague from a ground rodent that was as happy as as a clam.
When it spread from it to a rat it became a big problem.
Many of the houses had thatch roofs the rats lived in.
The change from that helped matters a lot.
The smell must have been overwhelming.

Worth

[Cole_Robbie]

My two biggest tomato pests are the sweet potato whitefly and the brown marmorated stink bug. Both of them are invasive species that likely arrived in this country on poinsettias from China.

My high tunnel is turning into a disease nightmare. The first years, I never had to spray. I just sprayed Daconil in the high tunnel for the first time ever last week, and I am going to follow that with some copper sulfate tonight.

[dmforcier]

I wonder too if it isn't the varieties grown. A farmer would plant what had done well for him and his ancestors, indicating a degree of resistance to the local bibbits.

Now we all grow varieties that we find interesting, and which may not have bibbit resistance.

[Worth1]

I am going to get beat all to devil here but used correctly DDT and diazinon were two of the best pesticides ever invented.
I still have some of the latter left and when I need to I use it sparingly and very diluted but not on anything I will eat.
This year was the first year I have used it in years.
My grape vines were infested with something and now they are gone.
DDT has saved millions of lives.
Lead arsenate was another one we used on beetles one year they were so bad.
Diseased plants I have no room for, they are gone.
Overly infested aphid plants are burned in the street.

Worth

[dmforcier]

I read Silent Spring when I was a kid and Rachel Carson talked me into opposing DDT. Now, as I understand it, the "scientific" findings that were central to the argument have been debunked. But you'd never know it. Just last month a PBS (Nature?) special used the old "thin raptor eggshell" illustration of why DDT is still banned. It really shouldn't be.

OTOH, bees were never part of the equation. I wonder about its effect on bee populations?

Edit: Found a paper on this that is in PDF and won't let me select text from the Abstract. Bottom line is, they established 23 hives around a crop, then aerial sprayed DDT early in the morning when the bees weren't active. For the rest of the day the bees avoided the crop, then went back to work as normal. Overall effect on the bees: none.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/1....1958.10431570

[ContainerTed]

Carolyn, I think it is not one of these things that have been identified by the other posts. I think it is a combination of all of them in different proportions in different areas of the country. The proliferation of the international trade has certainly exposed us to more maladies, but we refined some of those and sent them back. Bonnie Plants has procedures that produce some of their products in what are sort of "regional" centers that serve larger areas based on transportation and not on climate factors.

So, my opinion is that it is all of those things brought up already. Some places will be affected by some of them and other places all of them.

As children, we used to call DDT "Drop Dead Twice".

I will not hesitate to use whatever I can to fight the critters and other diseases for my crop. That's what you're supposed to do when you're at the top of the food chain.

[Country Breeze]

Originally Posted by ContainerTed

Carolyn, I think it is not one of these things that have been identified by the other posts. I think it is a combination of all of them in different proportions in different areas of the country. The proliferation of the international trade has certainly exposed us to more maladies, but we refined some of those and sent them back. Bonnie Plants has procedures that produce some of their products in what are sort of "regional" centers that serve larger areas based on transportation and not on climate factors.

So, my opinion is that it is all of those things brought up already. Some places will be affected by some of them and other places all of them.

As children, we used to call DDT "Drop Dead Twice".

I will not hesitate to use whatever I can to fight the critters and other diseases for my crop. That's what you're supposed to do when you're at the top of the food chain.

I agree. It certainly is a complex issue.

[AlittleSalt]

I agree Ted. I think it is a combination of everything written so far. As a child, I heard DDT meant "Dead Ducks Tomorrow".

We have the marmorated stink bugs and Asian Lady Beetles here in our garden. I have little doubt that global trading is how they got here.

As for pollution, one of biggest questions is how having millions of fuel burning vehicles out on the roads is 'really' effecting the world around us. If we pollute the air - doesn't it also eventually pollute our soil causing ill effects?

[Worth1]

As sort of an example of the trade issue.
My neighbors from Chile told me when they were there the US fruit sucked and they thought it was just our fruit.
When they moved here they bought the stuff from there thinking it was better and thought it sucked, so they bought US grown fruit.
With this plant material moving around comes a lot of risk that cant all be inspected.
What we know as a tumble weed came from Russia of all places.


Worth