LateBlight-it's our fault ??

[matereater]

Ran across a youtube video this morning, thought some of you might be interested. Evidently there are some media outlets that report that the spread of Late Blight has been caused by organic and home gardners.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrhssSsPrdM&NR=1


oops, somehow got this posted twice, can someone remove one?? sorry!

[geeboss]

I need a good laugh this morning!

George

[ContainerTed]

I was posting about sick Bonnie plants back in the spring after watching them unloaded from the truck. The most irritating thing about this (after the fact that they cost all of their customers and their customers neighbors a huge wad from the diseases), is that you can't find any local suppliers of plants anymore. Even the non-franchise nurseries are stocking Bonnie plants.

Just another reason to keep growing and saving our seeds from the heirlooms and OP's. Bonnie got all of the other eggs into one basket and then dropped the whole package down the stairwell.

A point of pride for me is that Bonnie did not get a single penny of my money this year. And maybe it's purely coincidental, but I've had the best year ever (by far).

I've always said that a Mathematician can show you that 2 plus 2 equals 4. And a Statistician can PROVE to you that that answer is wrong. I think the video was heavily influenced by Statistician thinking. (Big smile)

Ted

[cdbva]

I couldn't finish watching the video. Too reactionary. And too much like Blair Witch.

Christine

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by ContainerTed

I was posting about sick Bonnie plants back in the spring after watching them unloaded from the truck. The most irritating thing about this (after the fact that they cost all of their customers and their customers neighbors a huge wad from the diseases), is that you can't find any local suppliers of plants anymore. Even the non-franchise nurseries are stocking Bonnie plants.

Just another reason to keep growing and saving our seeds from the heirlooms and OP's. Bonnie got all of the other eggs into one basket and then dropped the whole package down the stairwell.

A point of pride for me is that Bonnie did not get a single penny of my money this year. And maybe it's purely coincidental, but I've had the best year ever (by far).

I've always said that a Mathematician can show you that 2 plus 2 equals 4. And a Statistician can PROVE to you that that answer is wrong. I think the video was heavily influenced by Statistician thinking. (Big smile)

Ted

Ted, the initial focus on the LB situation here in the NE was on Bonnie plants, they pulled all the plants, but when more research was done it turns out that the Bonnie plants were not the source of LB infection.

They have 28 greenhouses here in the NE and it was shown that the plants leaving the greenhouses were OK, but let any plants sit outside at Big Box stores and elsewhere and they're a target for ANY pathogens in the area.

There are several threads here on LB and I know that a couple of them have the excellent link to Cornell which explains that LB is always around but that the specific conditions this year, meaning a very cold and wet Spring and Summer led to rapid spread of the disease.

It doesn't matter if plants from any source were purchased or whether plants were raised from seed, either purchased or home saved, they still were susceptible to the LB spores that were spread by air and also embedded in rain drops.

Here's the link I'm, referring to:

http://www.hort.cornell.edu/departme...path/lbfaq.pdf

And there was a lot of misdiagnosis going on as well. I had three local folks who brought me leaves and affected fruits and the problem in all three cases was a combination of Septoria Leaf Spot and Early Blight ( A. solani) and these two foliage diseases also spread very rapidly and killed off plants rapidly b'c of the weather conidtions.

So I'm not watching the video b'c the spread of LB was NOT caused by organic growers, far from it, nor was it caused by home growers.

The Cornell link tells the true story.

[WillardJones]

Does anyone have a source of late blight tolerant tomato seed for 2010?

[dice]

Does anyone have a source of late blight tolerant tomato seed for 2010?

Tania has a Chernomor RL that survived
late blight in her outdoor garden in the fall
when everything around it did not. It is
not certified by a gene-testing lab or
anything like that, but you could try it.

Another one, similarly anecdotal rather
than certified, is Cosmonaut Volkov.
One member here reported in one of the
earlier late blight threads that every
tomato plant in his garden was wiped out
except 2 Cosmonaut Volkov plants, which
apparently had late blight resistance.
Cosmonaut Volkov seeds are generally
available commercially.

West Virginia '63 seeds as far as I know are
not commercially available, nor are
Rockingham, two other late blight tolerant
varieties.

There are doubtless different races of
late blight, and plants with resistance
may not be resistant to all variations of it.

[TZ-OH6]

Burrackers Favorite resisted the late blight here, as did Hawaiian Currant, I also have a large black unknown [cross?] that resisted, but it doesn't taste good. These plants had slight patchy infection while everything around them was decimated.

There is a post at Garden Web where people are posting their survivors.

[WillardJones]

Does anyone know if Legend is adapted to the Appalachian Mountains?

[RandyG]

You can grow Legend in the Appalachian mountains but it does not perform well compared to most other varieties and is of little use for combating late blight. It has only the Ph-2 gene, which is not very durable most seasons.

[goodwin]

Cherry tomatoes seem to do better. Anyway, I have a particularly blight resistant strain of Black Cherry I've saved a bunch of seed from. And I'm expecting some of the crosses back to wild relatives will show resistance. Last summer's results were encouraging.