Did you buy your tomato plants from Wal-mart, K-mart, Home Depot, or Lowes?  Or even from a local nursery which doesn't grow their own plants and instead buys them from  Bonnie?  Across the eastern U.S., these stores have pulled all tomato plants from their shelves due to a late blight epidemic.  It won't hurt you, but your plants will go kaput.

Some people even speculate that commercial growers might be affected.  That would mean few fresh tomatoes and potatoes in the grocery stores this summer.  To read about the symptoms of late blight and more, visit this Boston Globe article.

Of course, if you grow your own heirloom tomatoes from seed every year, like we do, you're probably okay.  Still, if your neighbors' plants are infected, yours might be too.  If you see symptoms, you're best off yanking the plants out and burning them or putting them somewhere far from the compost pile.

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.