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Post by lavandulagirl on Aug 14, 2009 17:44:18 GMT -5
That's for sure, Patrick. I think, though, that with all the worry about late blight, lots of gardeners, not just the new ones, either, are looking for blight in every symptom... a curled leaf, a droopy branch... kind of like the H1N1 virus for us humans... there were 3 students at a local high school, all in the band program, who just came down with that. Because they were also at a local band camp recently, we're now all looking askance at our kids every time they sneeze, or seem a little off their feed.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 14, 2009 17:53:43 GMT -5
Ive never had any disease in my plants yet, but I used to see it back on the farm, as for h1n1 this whole thing makes ZERO sense, why are people scared? because the news told them to be? So far it is much less of a killer then the regular flu people get each year....
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Post by lavandulagirl on Aug 14, 2009 18:26:52 GMT -5
I'm not saying anyone is scared of it, SS... I'm saying it is the disease du jour in the news, and so any symptom is considered to be a possible H1N1 symptom. Much like the late blight is the plant disease du jour in the news, and therefore everyone is attributing all tomato plant problems to possible late blight.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 14, 2009 18:36:36 GMT -5
of course people are scared of it, its being called a worldwide pandemic, my wife already had officials come to their school the first day telling themwhat to do. Governments doing drills in case people riot trying to get vaccines. Our gov also ordered enough vaccines for every american so that contradictory. But of course people are scared of it.
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sphinxeyes
gardener
Suburbia, small garden in side yard, containers on larger back deck. Hot humid summers.
Posts: 154
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Post by sphinxeyes on Aug 14, 2009 18:46:40 GMT -5
Hmm, after looking at those photos on Cornell's site, it looks like what I have might be either Septoria Leaf Spot or Early Blight. It doesn't seem like late blight because it's been a few days and I haven't seen an increase in the spread of it. There are a few fruits that although they've ripened, still have yellow spots on the top. Others have some dark soft spots on the sides, but not the bottom, so it can't be BER I don't think. Any of this sound familiar?
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Post by canadamike on Aug 14, 2009 22:16:55 GMT -5
I think pictures would help. Diseases express themselves in many variable ways, then we, humans, try to describe them, usually with a similar set of words for many of them....
Hey, once sick, they pretty much all look shitty and rotten and bruised and yellow and brown and dried out or the opposite and...and...and...
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Post by michaeljohnson on Aug 15, 2009 1:09:46 GMT -5
I think next year I might include some (New Hampshire-Sure crop) which give decent size tomatoes of good flavor, and are fairly resistant to Late Blight, in order to guarantee at least some decent tomatoes.
The seeds are available from a couple of places on the net.
Territorial seed company-being one of them.
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Post by robertb on Aug 15, 2009 12:26:29 GMT -5
Dobies in the UK are offering Fantasio F1, which claims to be blight resistant. Has anyone tried it? If it stands up, I may try dehybridising it or crossing it with some of my other varieties.
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 15, 2009 16:04:45 GMT -5
Hmm, after looking at those photos on Cornell's site, it looks like what I have might be either Septoria Leaf Spot or Early Blight. It doesn't seem like late blight because it's been a few days and I haven't seen an increase in the spread of it. There are a few fruits that although they've ripened, still have yellow spots on the top. Others have some dark soft spots on the sides, but not the bottom, so it can't be BER I don't think. Any of this sound familiar? It's not that I would discourage you from trying to figure out what you have, but in the end the solution is the same. You need to do exactly what you're doing. Remove infected foliage in order to reduce the spread. This is pretty much the only organic control measure available for all of these kinds of problems. The spots on the fruit are not a good sign however. That's starting to sound more like late blight. If you have a fruit that's infected and ripe or nearly ripe, you might try bringing it inside and seeing if it quickly rots. That's also a sign of late blight.
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 15, 2009 16:22:33 GMT -5
of course people are scared of it, its being called a worldwide pandemic, my wife already had officials come to their school the first day telling themwhat to do. Governments doing drills in case people riot trying to get vaccines. Our gov also ordered enough vaccines for every american so that contradictory. But of course people are scared of it. The current swine flu is serious, and people are dying from it. Maybe not any more than ordinary flu, but if people can die from any illness, it's serious. The real question is if Tamiflu is appropriate or even useful, and if it does anything other than maybe get rid of the symptoms a day or two earlier and make patent holder a lot richer. They've decided here in children, the side effects are worse than the benefits and so are only giving it to adults. Flu vaccines have mercury in them, which is very poisonous. Honestly, I would not myself want a vaccine under these circumstances, unless the disease were very, very serious. The real question here is, regardless of how serious swine flu is, is going out and spending money on a treatment from one of the worlds big drug companies is a useful thing to do. The way things look now, the answer in my opinion is no. What is a useful thing to do however, is spread the word about the origins of this disease, a factory farm in Mexico. In fact, because it's a combination of pig and bird DNA, it's almost certainly a result of both factory chicken farms and factory pig farms coexisting side by side like they do in this part of Mexico, something scientists have been warning us about for decades now. Calling a spade a spade and letting governments around the world this is not an acceptable situation is in my opinion the most effective thing we can do about swine flu. Just because Smithfield Farms denies the disease started at it's facility doesn't mean it didn't happen, and an awful lot of evidence seems to point in this direction.
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Post by canadamike on Aug 15, 2009 16:34:14 GMT -5
I agree with Patrick, we have to call the lies ofthe system. These mega protein factories are pilling up animal like it has never been done before, no fresh air, no sunlight, no real life in fact, they become a cesspool of bacterias and viruses. Concentration of production is responsable for this sorry state of affair and then so are the gigantic meat cutting/treatment factories. When the shit hit the 'giant'' fan it spreads all over many countries real fast. I make my own hams
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Post by michaeljohnson on Aug 16, 2009 0:39:39 GMT -5
Robert- tried fantasio F1. last year and I must tell you that it is a lousy tomato to grow, and would not advise it, the tomatoes come nothing like the photo on the packet, they are all misshapen and inconsistent and not very good at all- I for one will not be growing it again.
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Post by robertb on Aug 16, 2009 12:48:35 GMT -5
I've heard that there are problems producing a commercially viable resistant tom. I might be better starting with a resistant species. On the other hand, all I want is the gene, so it might be worth a try for breeding material.
Tamiflu is no longer recommended for children in the UK. It's not a particularly effective drug, and it does have some serious side effects.
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 16, 2009 13:47:52 GMT -5
Robert, if you want a blight resistant tomato, there are loads around. This isn't the problem. The problem is getting a nice tasting and large tomato, which are pretty much non-existent, at least for our climate. Nearly all blight resistant ones, that truly are blight resistant in our climate, are the wild or current varieties which tend to be small and sweet. It's proven very hard to 'breed up' tiny tomatoes into larger blight resistant ones. This is one of the reasons Humboltii is particularly interesting, because it's a little larger than the others.
One of the problems with late blight is it's very regional, so a tomato that's resistant in the US won't necessarily be resistant here. You are much better off getting something that someone locally has found to be blight resistant here. For example, there's a tomato in the US called legend, that dies as fast as anything else here.
If you are trying to breed a new tomato, you may not want to start with a commercial F1, that might complicate things. Especially because there are lots of OP varieties around anyway.
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Post by canadamike on Aug 16, 2009 19:40:05 GMT -5
Here again, I second Patrick. There are strains of these diseases.
And I second him with the final solution too, we simply have to get rid of them.
Knowing what the diseases are helps only to try to find plants that are resistant later, it never helps in the year it happens. Cull and keep on...
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