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Post by michaeljohnson on Aug 21, 2009 0:39:20 GMT -5
"Now"-he tells us, !!!-sooner-rather than later would have been better , does it really work though??? Because as far as I can tell- nothing will stop it once it has started, only if they are protected from the night air, in a greenhouse or conservatory, even then if you have any air gaps or ventilation open at night it will get in and catch the first one or two plants near the ventilation area All greenhouses etc, must be totally closed up at night during Later Blight time-otherwise it gets into those and strikes the plants, keep them closed up for at least three weeks at night during L.B. season, you can of course fling them open again first thing in the morning until about 7.30pm at night.
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Post by canadamike on Aug 21, 2009 1:11:22 GMT -5
Late blight has killed plenty of 300 feet rows of potatoes, where we walked and went through the plants. Right beside them are hundreds of tomato plants of many origins, different cultivars, and none is touched YET. There is something to be said for cultural practices and leaving plants alone. We went and picked early potatoes , and the rows are dying. We looked to the tomatoes from afar, blight is killing everything around, even some poplars are dying, no kidding, surely a different strain, but my friend's poplars lost whole branches in a day or so. Totally dried up. Something is going on, and the more I think of it, especially the blight plague having killed the tomato harvest in New England, the more I think I am ALWAYS right about not touching tomato plants until harvest. The harvest will be very late, IF there is one, but it looks much better in my garden than the ones of my friends, with dying plants. DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES Did I make myself clear? ?
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 21, 2009 1:17:51 GMT -5
poplar trees are dieing too? that is crazy. We better get someone on this fast, like when the bees started dieing, (okay Im being sarcastic)
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Post by Penny on Aug 21, 2009 5:38:44 GMT -5
My next door neighbor now has blight on her plants.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Aug 21, 2009 8:08:12 GMT -5
The times they are a changin'...
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 21, 2009 9:37:01 GMT -5
It's really hitting everywhere this year, isn't it? North Carolina, Ontario, east coast, west coast, Europe, North America. Pretty much all the bases are covered, aren't they?
A friend of mine in Ireland mentioned in the nearby town of Skibbereen they commemorated the Irish Potato famine this year next to mass graves that hold the remains of 8,000-10,000 people who died in 1941.
It's kind of sobering to think the same disease is back, much more serious than it was in 1941, covering large parts of probably every continent.
The major seed companies would like us to think the only solution is GM potatoes. It's a good thing we have Tom...
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Post by grungy on Aug 21, 2009 10:27:13 GMT -5
I think so Michel - DONT TOUCH THOSE PLANTS, especially if they are moist or there is any humidity in the air. It is quite dry here and we knock off handling the tomato plant (especially) around 5:30 and haven't seen a sign of blight in the area.
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Post by grunt on Aug 21, 2009 13:57:54 GMT -5
I'll go a step farther on not touching your plants. It's not just late blight transmission that is enabled when you handle your plants. Did you ever notice that volunteers growing right next to your transplants never have the base leaves yellow off on them, while your transplants almost always do? Or that you start to see minor leaf yellowing, and light disease indications after you tuck your plants back into where they should be? I handle my plants the least I can, and still stay in control of them (at least to where I can convince myself that I am in control). As Val says, I get away from them at about 5:30 PM, and won't touch them before about 9:30 or 10:00 AM. Even so, I can walk down the rows and tell which plants I have had to manhandle by the amount of yellow or unhealthy leaves that are visible. It's another reason I use the drop line and sidelines to hold the plants in place, much less contact with the plants is required. I would change Michel's "DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS IN THESE TIMES" to "DO NOT TOUCH THEM PLANTS UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO" Cheers
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 21, 2009 14:05:48 GMT -5
I get it so what michel is saying is touch all the plants? Luckily I havent got anything like that here,(knowck on wood) it sounds kinda freaky its spreading so far, does it always spread like this, and have forms killing poplar trees?
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Post by williethered on Aug 21, 2009 15:48:49 GMT -5
Silverseeds we don't get this blight here in CA either. Too dry as well. And the Poplar trees you are talking about are an "introduced"species. I don't know about the rest of the Country, but we have had way more bees this year than usual. Especially moving swarms in residential neighborhoods.
Northern NM, are you near Gallup, or farther north?
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Post by canadamike on Aug 21, 2009 16:17:54 GMT -5
they are horticultural poplars. And I agree with Grunt, I do not touch any plant unless I really have to. Never. And I sure don't trim them.
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 22, 2009 11:21:44 GMT -5
There are a number of different blights. Of the top of my head I can think of apple/pear tree 'fire blight', there's a kind of grape vine blight, I'm sure there are others. You mentioned poplar trees. In fact there are probably dozens, perhaps hundreds of other blights. Closely related to these are 'rusts', and to a lesser extent mildew diseases. Similar chemicals are used by commercial farmers to control all of these things. While perhaps a little more common in wet climates, it's not true they don't occur in dry climates. They tend to follow places where large scale mono-culture commercial crops that host the diseases are grown. The emergence in any particular year or region is dependent on weather patterns that are complicated, and not necessarily dependent on wet weather.
The kind of blight we've seen this year of potatoes and tomatoes is unusually serious. Not just because these are two of the worlds most important crops, but it's always been an issue of chemical warfare with fungicides used to treat it getting stronger and stronger, and now it seems they are running out of options other than developing resistant varieties.
A similar situation is occurring with wheat, which is being wiped out by the UG99 stem rust. This is a silent catastrophe waiting to happen. Last I heard attempts to create resistant strains have been unsuccessful, and there is also no fungicide that works.
My own experience in my own garden is this whole family of mildew related diseases have been getting a lot worse over the last decade or so, especially during El Niño/La Niña years, and my own opinion is that changing weather patterns are playing a major role here.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 22, 2009 14:19:37 GMT -5
There is no large scale farming within hundreds, of miles. Hopefully that will give me a biffer zone too. I have heard about the issue with wheat. Was this breeding they tried or genetic modification?
This is another reason Im looking into growing other grains and things, hoefully if others fail some will thrive.
It is a seperate issue, but the only tree/plant issues I have heard of here are, related to less water. It seems after these forrests were logged, more trees then normal grew back, so most of them lived under a stressed state, so some type of beetle or something is wiping out huge sections of these stressed trees.
Isnt this a joke, alot of these issues we could help or fix with knowledge we already hav. instead we persist with our same faulty patterns. In fact often they propose what helped make the problem more prominant as the solution.
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Post by stevil on Aug 22, 2009 14:29:07 GMT -5
It's also hit us in the north for the first time this early in the year - this is the first year I've had to harvest most of my potatoes in August. The only ones not affected are the 3 "resistent" Sarpo varieties (Mira, Tominia and Axona), but I only have a few plants of these....
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Post by canadamike on Aug 22, 2009 15:59:40 GMT -5
Here are a few picures of the devastation, then a ray of hope from Tom's research: Flowering like if nothing was happening: Some perfectly healthy right besides dying plants:
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