Late Blight: Devastating Tomato And Potato Plants In The Eastern United States

Doesn’t it seem as though there are more crop diseases than ever popping up in 2009? The latest crisis is a disease known as “late blight”, and it is absolutely devastating tomato and potato plants in the eastern half of the United States. As if tomatoes were not expensive enough already. Most Americans have never even heard of “late blight”, but it actually has a long history. Late blight is the disease that is blamed for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, and now it is seemingly back with a vengeance.

A stunning press release from Cornell University is warning gardeners and commercial farmers that late blight is hitting the eastern United States with a ferocity that has never been seen before.

Meg McGrath, an associate professor of plant pathology and plant-microbe biology at Cornell says that “late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the U.S.”

So how do you know if your plants have late blight?

Well, one symptom that you want to look for is ugly brown spots on the stems of your plants.

As those spots get larger, white fungal growth starts to develop until a soft rot totally collapses the stem.

If you think that you have late blight, authorities are encouraging you to destroy all of those plants.

With the Ug99 wheat rust already out of control, and with this “late blight” hitting the tomato and potato crops really hard, it looks like food prices are going to rise and there may even be shortages. Now is the time to ensure that you and your family have built an adequate emergency food supply.