Garden Pests and Diseases: NE Gardener with a ? re: Late Blight and next season!, 1 by thethorinator

thethorinator wrote:
Hello Fellow Gardeners,
I posted a similar one of these in the Northeast Gardening forum last night and would love to get at least one credible answer which goes beyond this season, since that's what scares me the most. As some of you likely know, we were hit with the same blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine and hit H-A-R-D knocking out even the most fastidious of gardener's tomatoes mostly but also some potatoes as well, and it seemed to happen overnight. It makes the "yummy orbs" disgusting and downright inedible giving one the worst indegistion--but I digress--the point is this: I have a small (4 with a 5th to be built soon) raised bed garden which yielded a bountiful harvest for a worthy cause, namely a local food pantry serving a wide cross-section of a very close town. The tomatoes, "Sungold," "Purple Cherokee," a blueberry x tomato which yielded one of the strongest batches with the thickest skin, "Supersweet 100's," "Sprite," "MiRoma," "Great White," "Rainbow," "Big Early," and "Juliet." Apparently, the source of the blight has been traced back to infected store stock, from Walmart--just a cited example on the local edition of NPR--while they didn't cite the one source that was retail and local that donated plants that were a bit over-watered with the typical lower pale leaves but no mildew, no mold and were planted immediately and thrived. All was well until flowers and fruit were well into the harvest when the lower and mid-vine leaves started to get yellow with gray/brown spots immediately turning to completely brown with no bugs of any kind and, believe me, I looked and a local gardening expert examined them and said there were no pests, per-se either. Then, the tomatoes--themselves--started looking like the had a horrible case of sunburn turning to black very quickly...in some cases...picked fruit would get spots on them after picking even when washed in a mild bleach solution and then turned disfigured/black under the skin just like the rest. This looked identical to what I read in an online article on this very subject with the same advice, "Cut down and bag all infected plants and affected fruit, close the bags snugly, and dispose of them either by burning them or in a landfill but, do NOT try to compost them as the spores will thrive in the heat as opposed to being destroyed by it. So, I followed the advice!

All that to ask my dreaded question: Will it return next season or will the -20 temperatures of our harsh winters effectively kill the nasty "alien beast? And, I was a lucky one, I had over 40lbs of fresh tomatoes before the blight hit the plants hard covering even the stocks with disfiguring rust-brown then turning to black spots People were all but foaming at the mouth for the taste of some of those sweet Sungolds "like I grew last year." I'd appreciate an aswer from anyone!!.

Behold a picture of some of my beauties before the great destroyer hit them...I cried, well nearly, having to chuck fully-developed Great White tomatoes into a Garbage bag simply because they had the tell-tall brown-to-black spots under the skin, especially around the crown of them. By the way, I loved the Great Whites that I DID get to enjoy...my all-time favorite in cherries and over-all production in general has to be "Sungold" and the blueberry x tomato cross (color and production with thick skin and never splitting).

Sincerely,
Thor
gardenerthor@comcast.net