Officials warn gardeners of tomato blight
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A healthy tomato plant grows in a local garden. Tomatoes and other plants could be hurt by an infestation of late blight, state officials caution. Tom Mitchell / Rutland Herald |
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By Tom Mitchell Staff Writer - Published: July 4, 2009
State agriculture officials are alerting gardeners and farmers that tomato plants diseased with late blight have been found and removed this week from a dozen retail outlets along the Route 7 corridor.
A threat to local commercial crops, the infected plants were distributed recently from a single shipment mostly to four big box stores, where hundreds of plants have been removed and destroyed, officials said.
"There were a number of tomato plants that were shipped into Vermont sometime last week, (and) there were plants that had late blight," Tim Schmalz, state plant pathologist in the Agency of Agriculture, said Thursday.
Some plants with the fungus were removed from three outlets in Rutland, including a store on Route 4, a second store at the Rutland Shopping Plaza, and a third in the Diamond Run Mall, state agriculture officials said.
Diseased plants were also found and removed at three big-box stores in Bennington and similar retailers in Williston, South Burlington and Berlin, officials said, as well as a couple of independent stores in Pownal and Essex. Officials at the Alabama-based company that sold the seedlings to the outlets could not be reached for comment on Friday.
Part of the concern is that some gardeners may have already planted tomatoes infected by the fungus or exposed to it, Schmalz said.
People are being asked to check their tomato plants to for the fungus and destroy infected ones, he said. Spores on infected plants could spread on the wind to commercial fields, according to Vern Grubinger, vegetable and berry specialist with the University of Vermont Extension Service.
"This is shaping up to be one of the worst years for late blight, the fungal disease made famous as the cause of the Irish potato famine of the mid-1800s," Grubinger said.
The disease, (caused by Phytophthora infestans) has appeared early because of the rainy, humid weather, Grubinger said.
Infected leaves have spots as big as a nickel that appear water-soaked, beginning at leaf tips and edges, Grubinger said. The edges of diseased plants will be covered with a white fungal growth that contain the spores, he said.
Grubinger has begun warning commercial and organic vegetable growers, who face the loss of their crops if they don't spray to contain the fungus. The fungus can wipe out entire tomato and potato crops, he said.
"The folks that I would be worried about would be folks in community gardens," said Greg Cox, who grows organic tomatoes at his Boardman Hill Farm in West Rutland.
If a gardener sees a fungus on the upper plant with brown lesions and yellow marking they should have them tested by the state, he said. Having not seen late blight on his farm for the past 20 years, Cox said he will be watching for it this year, noting the ability of the spores to travel. Late blight doesn't survive Vermont winters, he said.
Early blight, a much less harmful, more common fungus, shows up every year and crops can survive better, Cox said, but is not usually seen until perhaps early August.
He said he's heard that fungus, that shows up as a yellowing on lower leaves, is present in other gardens in the area. He sprays plants when that shows up but must do so when plants are dry.
By midweek, meanwhile, Schmalz, the state plant pathologist, who gathered samples of infected plants from a big-box store in Williston, had put all exposed plants on "stop sale," meaning that the plants at the various locations were removed from the stores and destroyed.
This was the last shipment of tomatoes for the season from this distributor so there should be no more infected plants coming in, at least through this particular access point.
"We are asking home gardeners to keep an eye on their tomato plants, (and particularly) if they know they have plants where the disease was established and watch them," he said. "It is beautiful weather to be a plant pathogen," Schmalz said.
There have been widespread reports of the fungus in New York state, Grubinger said. So far, the distributor doesn't believe the fungus broke out at any of its growing facilities, Schmalz said.
Infestations were widespread through New York and New Jersey, he said. Growers within a few miles of New York state could be at risk for exposure to spores carried on the wind from infected areas there, Schmalz said.
Plants can be disposed by placing them in plastic and taking them to the dump. In cases where there are too many plants for gardeners and farmers to remove, the plants can be rototilled into the garden or farm field where they'll decompose, Grubinger said.
tom.mitchell@rutlandherald.com
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