While we don’t have to worry about starvation like the Irish due to lack of crop diversity, it is interesting that we are seeing the same mold that caused the Irish Potato Famine widespread in the USA now. – Anthony
Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S.
Reuters – Dark brown lesions on stems, with white fungal growth developing under moist conditions, are characteristic … By Julie Steenhuysen Julie Steenhuysen – Fri Jul 10, 5:22 pm ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.
“Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States,” said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in Riverhead, New York.
She said the fungal disease, spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United States.
“Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart and Lowe’s are some of the stores the plants have been seen in,” McGrath said in a telephone interview.
The disease, known officially as Phytophthora infestans, causes large mold-ringed olive-green or brown spots on plant leaves, blackened stems, and can quickly wipe out weeks of tender care in a home garden.
McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States. The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.
“What’s unique about it this year is we have never seen plants affected in garden centers being sold to home gardeners,” she said.
This year’s cool, wet weather created perfect conditions for the disease. “Hopefully, it will turn sunny,” McGrath said. “If we get into our real summer hot dry weather, this disease is going to slow way down.”
FUNGICIDES WILL CONTROL BLIGHT
According to its website, the University Maryland’s Plant Diagnostic Lab got a suspect tomato sample as early as June 12, very early in the tomato growing season, which runs from April-September.
McGrath said the risk is that many gardeners will not recognize it, putting commercial farms and especially organic growers at risk.
“My concern is for growers. They are going to have to put a lot more time and effort in trying to control the disease. It’s going to be a very tough year,” she said.
“This pathogen can move great distances in the air. It often does little jumps, but it can make some big leaps.”
McGrath said the impact on the farmer will depend on how much the pathogen is spread. “Eastern New York is seeing a lot of disease,” she said.
She said commercial farmers will be able to use fungicides containing chlorothalonil to control the blight.
And while some sprays have also been approved for organic use, many organic farmers do not use them, making it much harder to control.
“If they are not on top of this right from the very beginning, it can go very fast,” she said.
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We had (garden crop, not commercial) devastating potato blight last year in July, it’s been absent so far this year. This summer is a lot dryer and a bit warmer than last so far.
Blight needs a particular spell of (to us, fairly warm and persistently humid – nights above 10C I think) weather for blight spores to germinate successfully – presumably such a spell has happened in parts of the US this year.
My understanding is once inside the planet blight is very difficult to stop – though dry weather must stop continued re infection I suppose.
I’m out here on the west coast, but buy store-bought tomato plants. I got a batch from K-mart in the spring, and I’m noticing some of them are turning black and wilted. I’m cutting down the irrigation, hopefully that will help along with some more sun and hot weather.
The last time I had trouble with fungus on the tomatoes was about 4-5 years ago. That year, a lot of people on the central coast CA were complaining about the same thing.
An old fashioned but effective method of dealing with this for gardeners is Bordeaux Mixture, basically copper sulphate and slaked lime. I imagine it can still be bought in the US.
Kindest Regards
Fortunately, an entire economy is not dependant on the spud, unlike Eire/Ireland in the 19thC. However, not sure if this “is a sky is falling” or these things come round in cycles!
Is this the opening post? Getting harder to do now the site is so popular!
>The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.<
It's that darn AGW again!
Cool, moist weather — sounds familiar — like our summer to date in the northeast [cocking head] yep – that’s thunder I hear. More rain. More mold & fungus – where’s that global warming they keep promising us. To hear the little prince tell it, we’ve got eight years till doom hits. I feel a venting episode coming on, so I’ll stop while I’m still ahead.
Yup! Cool, wet summers. That’s a clear sign of AGW. LMAO!!!
So is this caused by cooler temps?
Weather is not climate.
Not that anyone is responsible for the blight, or that the US is in any way comparable to Ireland of the 1840’s and it’s struggle with the British empire and Thomas Malthus.
As if the US is in a struggle with the forces of globalism, that’s just conspiracy rubbish. 😉
There is a quote though.
Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.
Machiavelli
“The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather…”
Not a problem in South Central Texas.
7/11/2009 Drought on way to being costliest ever
Area farmers and ranchers don’t need a color-coded map or a gloomy weather report to know they’re at ground zero of what is becoming one of Texas’ worst droughts ever.
They see it daily in parched fields too dry for seeds to sprout; in stock tanks [ponds] that carried water during the legendary drought of the 1950s but now are cracked and dry; in prickly pear cactus so thin that they don’t provide much moisture when their needles are burned off for skinny cows to enjoy.
Even some of the hardy live oak, hackberry and mesquite trees that have defied Texas’ harsh environment are beginning to show stress, one agricultural expert said.
“This is about as bad as it gets.” Joe Taylor, an extension service agent in Atascosa County south of San Antonio, said he’s beginning to question claims that the current dry spell simply matches the severity of the historic drought from the 1950s. “In fact, this drought may be the drought of record before long,” said Taylor.
San Antonio residents don’t have much reason to argue.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said San Antonio experienced its driest 22-month period on record through June, with less than 24 inches of rain since September 2007.
That’s 39 percent of normal and beat the prior record — set from December 1908 to September 1910 — by more than 2 inches, a department bulletin said. Now experts from Texas A&M University and its extension arms suspect the drought, which has choked wide swaths of Texas for almost two years, could become the state’s costliest in modern times.
In March, agricultural economists said losses associated with the drought were approaching $1 billion, and the situation has worsened considerably since then, particularly in South Texas.
Carl Anderson, a professor emeritus and extension economist, said that without strong rainfall in the next few months, losses for cattle and crops could climb past the $4.1 billion mark set in the 2006 drought — Texas’ modern record.
“It’s very severe and it’s broad based,” Anderson said. “It’s not leaving any aspect of agriculture without a loss.”
________________________________________________________
The above just reports the lack of rainfall, and doesn’t even mention the endless days of triple digit temperatures. Only 1 year (’07) in the last 4 had any significant rainfall and my St. Augustine lawn is now brown hay.
The “year without a summer” in the north, will be remembered as a “year with an endless summer” in this section of Texas.
No doubt, this too will be blamed on (manmade) climate change, or “climate chaos”, or whatever new phrase they can come up with.
This is the luck of the Irish?
The last Irishman I met who was convinced he had it wouldn’t dare even think of taking a chance on anything.
While the agenda has it’s blinders on, those model-generated flame-colored sunglasses, the blights have found us. Add that to the late frosts, pandemic flu and whatever else is lying in wait.
Too much Gore effect.
Needs some Anthony effect.
Anthony good, Gore bad. (to the tune of Beer good, fire bad).
Fascinating. 45 minutes ago I was up my neighbors house and she said she was wanted to put in a few more tomato plants but was warned yesterday about the blight that is going around and told not to mix any new plants with her healthy plants. Tony you are on top of this!
Tom in Texas (09:49:08) :” Not a problem in South Central Texas.”
Tom, a quick lookup shows that your part of the state is classified as Subtropical Subhumid which is explained as:
” a Subtropical Subhumid climate is characterized by hot summers and dry winters. ”
So it looks like you are right on the money climate wise, although I can sympathize with your discomfort. At least from my house it’s just a minute or two to the Gulf where I can relieve any heat with a dip in the 89 degree clear, teal water.
No blight yet. Now slugs are a different matter. For the last three weeks I’ve picked dozens off a few bean plants morning and evening. On a wet day they’re out in force. Soon as the sun comes out they disappear.
Please bring this to the attention of G8. In addition to limiting the changes to the earth’s temperature, perhaps they can also dispatch of the fungus with a decree.
Haven’t had any garden issues here in NE Mississippi this year. Good season so far, getting a lot of very nice veggies out of the garden. Squash, peas, beans, tomato, cukes, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, lettuce, okra, onions, etc. is just dandy.
Cold PDO leads to drought in Southern states like Texas and New Mexico. That’s because the Jet Stream is over the Northern part of the US, not the Southern part. The Dust Bowl era was a part of a cold PDO. However, that dust is vitally important to the Pacific Ocean, bringing mineral nutrients necessary for the fish cycle.
The effects of a cooling planet on many things, things such as food supplies, is far more detrimental than warming.
We’d better hope for warming over cooling. Only problem is, if it warms, we can be sure of draconian measures of governments to “tax us back to cooling” and take more control wherever they can in our daily lives.
See this link for a short course on trade winds and oceanic oscillations as a predictor and cause of the dust bowl era. Texas should be dry and warm right now, but not because of AGW, because of the just finished cold Pacific Ocean.
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news-print.cfm?art=859
If we don’t get the cold, dry spell, we won’t have a fishfood re-supply with a cold PDO cycle. Without the fishfood chain, we will disrupt the fish cycle. The PDO was discovered accidentally when performing analysis on ship logs related to fish tonnage. Texans need to understand that dust storms and crop failures are necessary in order to expose the nutrient rich top soil to the wind.
http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/k101397.html
Wet and *warm* weather, not cool weather is causing explosive spread of blight. Thunderstorm weather, actually. That moist warm weather. Don’t these people check their facts?
Anyway… For those interested: Remove weeds as much as you can, so the wind can dry the undergrowth fast enough. Once the blight strikes remove the greens and dispose of it. Don’t compost it, best burn it. Wait another week before harvest. The spuds are actually mostly far more resistant than the foliage so you might save the tubers.
Furthermore, kill all potato plants that grow out of left over tubers from last year: they may carry early infections. And don’t ever grow tomatoes and potatoes in one garden, unless the tomatoes are in a hothouse.
Here in the uk we are preparing for events like this by banning the most effective fungicides such as Procymidone because we will no longer need them in our warming climate.
oh dear.
Someone said that weather is not climate. That’s a bit of misdirection, imo. Weather happens in a climate. If the climate is cool, weather will have various effects in that overall cycle, at least locally. Saying that weather is not climate doesn’t actually prove anything nor does it prove AGW.