Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S.

[steven johnson]

A fungal disease, called late blight, is affecting potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants throughout the Northeast all the way up into Canada. The outbreak has been blamed on prolonged rainy, cool conditions. Big box store garden center create an environment for the disease to take hold by holding plants closely packed.

Fungal disease has had historical impact beyond just the Irish potato famine.

This same cool, wet weather in the summer of 1789, occurred just prior to the French Revolution, caused an ergot blight in the rye crop of Brittany and other parts of France. This blight caused hallucinations, paralysis, abortions and convulsions and came after a very cold winter that had created severe food shortages which are thought to have lead to civil unrest.

http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html

The LSD like effects of ergot may have caused hallucinations leading up to the Salem witch trials.

http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/ergot.htm

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.

"Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States," said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University's extension center in Riverhead, New York.

She said the fungal disease, spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United States.

"Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart and Lowe's are some of the stores the plants have been seen in," McGrath said in a telephone interview.

Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S.

[pecwae]

1. Explains why my MIL and BIL

have had limited success with tomatoes this year.

I'd read a bit about ergot and the Witch Trials some years ago and appreciate the link.

[Warpy]

2. Disclaimer

Potato blight is different from ergot. Eating mushy, rotten potatoes won't trip you out. It will just nauseate you nicely.

Ergotism isn't a great trip, either. Although it inspired all that fantastic carving on Gothic cathedrals, it also inspired the anti witch hysteria and a lot of other horrific social movements.

(forgive me, I feel it necessary to point out the obvious occasionally because of a long history of dealing with people who need to be told that they have to unwrap the suppository before they put it in)

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. What??!!

You mean that's where I have been going wrong? I suppose next you'll tell me I have to take them out of the box they came in, too!

;-)

[Warpy]

5. Not if they fit.

:evilgrin:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. That is where that well-known clinical tool...

The hand sledge, comes in soooooo handy. ;-)

[MuseRider]

7. Oh Goodness *snort*

"(forgive me, I feel it necessary to point out the obvious occasionally because of a long history of dealing with people who need to be told that they have to unwrap the suppository before they put it in)"

I would, on a rare occasion but more than once, get a patient from the floor or home who would have one of those babies in there. That foil musta hurt!

[Warpy]

8. The foil wasn't the bad one

Those plastic covers are SHARP!!!

[RoccoR5955]

4. That is probably why my heirloom tomatoes are fine! n/t