Story Created:
Jul 3, 2009 at 4:13 PM EST
Story Updated:
Jul 3, 2009 at 4:18 PM EST
ORISKANY, N.Y. (WKTV) - There's a disease that's hitting tomato plants across the northeast and it may have found its way to your own garden here in Central New York.
Officials out in Oriskany from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida County say the big box retail stores in our area : Walmart, K-Mart, Home Depot and Lowes all had the same supplier of tomato plants, a company from the south. That company had plants tainted with the disease called "late blight," a fast spreading disease that will kill your plant and any plants near it.
So Cornell Cooperative Extension inspectors went into each of the big box chains in our area, and found the stores either already had taken their tomato plants off the shelves or, in two of the stores, actually found plants that did have "late blight". After they were found, they were removed and destroyed and now they say all four big box stores in our area have taken all tomato plants off the shelves.
Jeff Miller with The Cornell Cooperative Extension is not going to say which stores had the diseased plants because he says if you bought plants at any of the four, there is a chance your plants could have the disease. If you have bought tomato plants from these stores, Miller says "really keep an eye on them and look for any kind of pale greening, wet soaked areas on the leaf tips and especially if they have started to turn brown and dispose of them as we have talked about." Miller says the proper method is to put the diseased plant in a dark colored plastic bag, put that plastic bag in another dark plastic bag and leave that in the sun in order to kill the spores. Once that is done, you are ok to put that with your other yard waster to be taken away.
Now if you would like more information on Late Blight, Cornell Cooperative Extension in Oneida County has a very good web site. It's cce.cornell.edu/oneida. There you'll find tips on how to prevent the disease and what to do if you should find it.
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