• Font Size    

Most Popular Videos Featured On KDKA.com

Pittsburgh Festivities Kickoff Holidays
E-mail

Close Window E-mail This Page

Late Blight Attacking Local Tomato Crops

Required fields are marked with an asterisk(*)

The information you provide will be used only to send the requested e-mail and will not be used to send any other e-mail communications. Read more in our Privacy Policy

Send E-mail

   Print     Share +   
Jul 28, 2009 8:33 pm US/Eastern

Late Blight Attacking Local Tomato Crops

UNITY TOWNSHIP (KDKA) ― There's nothing that tastes more like summer than a ripe red August tomato, but farm stands are posting signs warning that there may be shortages because of a fungal disease called late blight.

"You find it usually on the leaves first," says Neil Palmer of Unity, Westmoreland County, as he points to one of his plants. "It's just completely rotting."

When the disease first surfaced months ago, commercial farmers like 31-year-old Neil Palmer began spraying his half-acre of tomatoes with a fungicide trying to limit damage.

But fungicides are only a preventive - not a cure.

"It's always a worry in the back of growers' minds. But it's rare that it's a wide spread epidemic," says Eric Oesterling, a horticulture expert with the Penn State Cooperative Extension in Greensburg.

Contaminated plants from the South and sold at big retail stores are thought to be the source of late blight from Ohio to Maine.

Wet and cooler weather spreads the spores.

If your tomato plants are still health, try using a fungicidal spray containing the active ingredient Chlorothalonil. It may protect them.

Organic gardeners may prefer using fungicidal products with Copper Sulfate and Copper Hydroxide. But they're less effective.

Both are available are gardening centers.

But if late blight is already attacking your tomato plants - there's not much you can do.

"The best thing to do is get a garbage bag and start pulling plants," Oesterling said.

"I don't know what's going to happen to this crop. I've done everything to try to control it. It's just a very aggressive disease," Neil Palmer said.

Palmer, a fourth generation farmer, has already torn out 250 of his plants and tomatoes are his highest volume crop.

"Every year you never know what's going to happen - do your best and it's in God's hands," he said.

One blessing - late blight won't survive a western Pennsylvania winter.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Featured Slideshows On KDKA.com

You need the latest Flash player to view video content.
Click here to download.

Click here to bypass this detection if you already have the latest Flash Player.

Home & Garden

Top News Stories

© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.