You are here: Home / 2012 / June / 11 / via New Hope Seed: Late Blight of Potato & Tomato

via New Hope Seed: Late Blight of Potato & Tomato

Published on by
I received my newsletter from New Hope Seed Company this lazy Sunday. It alerted me to Late Blight. 
From the newsletter:

Late blight is a devastating disease that affects tomatoes and potatoes and we believe that home gardeners should be aware of it and take preventive action to control Late Blight.

Light Blight is a community disease and home gardeners need to share information if Late Blight shows up. Once the disease is detected it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to control. It can develop very rapidly, especially in wet weather. Using high amounts of nitrogen (N), and applying it later in the season than is recommended can result in very lush foliage that is more susceptible to infection by Late Blight and other diseases.

Get the word out early to neighboring home gardeners and farmers about Late Blight prevention and detection. Encourage your local Cooperative Extension office to get the word out more widely to gardeners as well.

 Consider this my contribution to spreading the word.

By the way, late blight is the blight that caused the potato famine. 

From Mr. Big Food’s Aunt & Uncle’s Farm. In Texas.
Let’s recap. I’m first made aware of outbreaks of late blight via a newsletter from a very small farm in Tennessee. 

Here’s the outbreak map, courtesy USABlight dot org, a project team “a grant from the USDA NIFA program titled “Reducing losses to potato and tomato late blight by monitoring pathogen populations, improved resistant plants, education, and extension”.”

“Welcome to USBlight.” 
Don’t get me wrong. A world without potatoes … . I can’t imagine it.

But “Welcome”?? 
Go read about this devastating plant disease. 

We’ll talk more about the funding for this project after I’ve done some research.