The Connecticut Cooperative Extension System says a disease that thrives in rainy weather is destroying tomato plants and some potato plants on farms and gardens across the state.
Late blight is a fungus-like organism that was responsible for the great potato famine in Ireland in the mid-1800s. This summer the frequent rains in the northeast created conditions conducive to the development of the blight. Plant Pathologist Joan Allen of the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System says many tomato growers are losing plants.
“Both home gardeners and commercial growers, particularly of tomato across the state have, in some cases, had their entire planting or crop wiped out and others have either escaped by good luck or escaped by using preventative fungecides to prevent the late blight from getting on their plants.”
Allen says the good news is freezing temperatures will kill any fungus left in the soil this winter. But it could survive in living plant tissues, such as potato tubers.
Another disease that thrives in rainy weather, called the “etch virus” has spread from potato plants to tobacco farms. It has damaged the leaves on tobacco plants grown in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
A few farmers are plowing their crops under