[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;639747]I agree Ted. I think it is a combination of everything written so far. As a child, I heard DDT meant "Dead Ducks Tomorrow".

We have the marmorated stink bugs and Asian Lady Beetles here in our garden. I have little doubt that global trading is how they got here.

[COLOR=Red]As for pollution, one of biggest questions is how having millions of fuel burning vehicles out on the roads is 'really' effecting the world around us. If we pollute the air - doesn't it also eventually pollute our soil causing ill effects?[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

Not near as much as the container ships coming across our oceans belching out black smoke as they go.
I have seen way too many that looked like a tire fire using the absolute worst fuel oil you can find.
Yes some companies have state of the art ships but most aren't.
Look at it this way one of those ships loaded with so called non polluting cars combined will belch out more pollution than the cars will in their life time.
This isn't even considering the pollution involved over there to make them.

This is the so called "not in my backyard" scenario, as long as we dont directly see it or do it then it is okay.
Not me, I try to think about everything I buy and how it effects the world and the people that live in it.
I cant always do it but I try to look at things farther than my own back yard.

The boat thing has been happening since early 1900s. We have banana boats to thank for those black stinging caterpillars in our Oak trees. Man those things hurt, and every year or so no matter how much you try to avoid them, one is gonna get you.

I think Worth has nailed the primary culprit.

I also think a big influence is changing business models for gardening and farming. First, the shift from emphasis on seed to selling plants, which results in living plants and soil being shipped all over the place. If there's a disease outbreak somewhere in the chain, it can quickly spread all over. Good recent examples are the rapid spread of basil downy mildew and what happened with impatiens a few years back.

Lastly, a warmer climate means more diseases. I don't want to start another war about climate science, but the fact is that, regardless of what you want to believe about the causes, the East Coast of the USA has seen steadily rising average temperatures, and that lets disease organisms establish themselves further north every year. It also means that southern pests travel inexorably northward as the climate becomes more hospitable to them with rising temperatures up here.

Last year, I had Southern Blight in one of my beds. A new bed with no purchased plants in it. I've also had problems with bacterial wilt in various beds even from the first year I made my current garden three years ago, so I'm pretty sure it's just in the soil here on my property and not brought in. That's also a disease that's considered something that happens mostly in warmer areas. My grandmother with whom I gardened as a child in the area wouldn't have recognized those two diseases.

What gorbelly said and especially regarding temps. Talking to gardeners the psyllids have gone from none 20 years ago, to some every few years, to nearly every year. We don't seem to get the long deep cold spells to drive them back. When I got to Denver in 1974 very few people had air conditioning, now it's standard.

I have seen stink bugs of all kinds all winter long.:(:cry:

Worth

Ship live plant material and disease hitchikes along.
Its not only tomato, the forests get hit hard too and the change is generational. Big changes.
American chestnut, elms, gone from an imported fungus.
Birch trees here dying by the millions from an invasive caterpillar, they have introduced a predator to eat the caterpillar, maybe it will work or not, but too late for many of our white birch.
Forester came to look at my pines, they are.all weeping sap from the bole in the canopy. They dont even know what causes it its all over NH, 50 years in, the pines are useless as sawlogs.
Hemlocks are.all.dying from wooly adelgid from asia.
Beech are all dying from a combo of sucking insects and fungus.
Bums me out.

We also have a hard time culling weak plants. we want to save everything that we paid for whether it was seed or plant till the end of the season... spraying and fussing over them just to keep them alive. why aren't we growing "survival of the fittest" plants in our gardens? like Joseph does.... there were no expensive seeds back in the pre 1960's like there are today. I have some seeds I pay 1.00 each for. no I do not want to pull a plant that I paid a dollar for the seed. the hybrid seed business is BIG business. some are great seeds some are not, but no matter what they are should we be growing weak plants?

Plant eugenics I practice it.:lol:
Worth

So many causes. Overpopulation being the main one in my opinion.

Overpopulation leads to habitat destruction and global warming whether you believe in it or not. More people need more food and of course they want it cheap so this leads to monoculture and "factory farming" which depletes the soil of it's natural components which kept the native diseases in check. Now the native "bugs" are being killed by chemical farming which produces more food quicker and cheaper.

20 years ago you could keep honeybees and never medicate them. Now due to non native disease and pesticides, the bees are in trouble. Medication will not even save them from pesticide exposure.

More people also means that more invasive species, plants, micro organisms and insects are being moved around the globe.

Worth mentioned that the Middle Ages were "dirtier" and they may have been but people lived a lot farther apart because there were not as many people so diseases did not spread as far and they died out due to lack of hosts. Now a bug can get to PA all of the way from China!

Our grandparents grew their own plants from seed and saved their own seeds. They didn't import plants or buy strawberries in the winter. They didn't vacation in Asia and return with spores.

Times have really changed and not totally for the better.

I agree with Gorbelly about the effects of climate change being part of the picture. Until just a couple of years ago, we didn't have ticks in the part of Norway I live in. The winters were too cold. Now they're here. We also didn't have these nasty things: [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoptena_cervi[/URL] until last year. I'm sure there will also be [U]tomato[/U] pests and diseases migrating up from the south because of the milder winters. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, and other reasons mentioned in this thread have contributed earlier.

In a world of expanding mobility, where germs can be spread like wildfire between countries and continents, we live with the increasing possibility of pandemics. When plants and plant products are similarly mobile (and disease can be seed-borne) disease and pests will be spread around the world.

Interesting comments. Waiting to hear from Carolyn.

One thing that we might be overlooking is the difference in the farmer and the backyard grower. When I was a kid we had a garden plot on my grandparents farm. We would go there on the weekend to work it, till it, etc but I don't ever remember my dad being very particular. In other words there seemed to be a certain loss expectation from bugs, BER, fungus, drought ,etc. I think that is why we planted so much and some years we would see a bumper crop and other years not so much. Compare that to my small number of raised beds and containers. I know each and every plant intimately. (my wife might say too intimately) Also as a kid we concentrated mostly on heat loving crops. One type of pole bean, one corn variety, one tomato variety, squash, and cucumbers the same each year. Varieties that were well known to grow well in our region. Contrast that to my multitude of onions, potatoes, carrots, 4 different lettuces, 6 pepper varieties and over 14 different tomatoes. However, I am not discounting what others have said about imported pests. Stink bugs for example were not something we had to deal with each year. Japanese beetles were and still are a problem.

Interesting question. Maybe its not a case of more disease, but that the hobby gardener has more knowledge at their fingertips. Or maybe our expectations were lower then. As in, maybe because we relied on the our own or neighbor gardens to produce our veggies instead of being able to go to the store and buy whatever perfect produce we want, any time of the year.

[QUOTE=Nematode;639864]Ship live plant material and disease hitchikes along.
Its not only tomato, the forests get hit hard too and the change is generational. Big changes.
American chestnut, elms, gone from an imported fungus.
Birch trees here dying by the millions from an invasive caterpillar, they have introduced a predator to eat the caterpillar, maybe it will work or not, but too late for many of our white birch.
Forester came to look at my pines, they are.all weeping sap from the bole in the canopy. They dont even know what causes it its all over NH, 50 years in, the pines are useless as sawlogs.
Hemlocks are.all.dying from wooly adelgid from asia.
Beech are all dying from a combo of sucking insects and fungus.
Bums me out.[/QUOTE]


British Columbia's interior forests and lumber industry have been suffering due to a Pine Beetle infestation. When I googled it I was pleasantly surprised to see some good news. Apparently the increased temperatures are also allowing forests to grow faster. As we know, nature abhors a vacuum. One thing dies, another arises. We expect things to go on the same way forever but it would seem that Mother Nature has other plans for us.
[url]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/climate-change-bc-forest-mountain-pine-beetle-1.3530301[/url]

[QUOTE=Keiththibodeaux;639754]The boat thing has been happening since early 1900s. We have banana boats to thank for those black stinging caterpillars in our Oak trees. Man those things hurt, and every year or so no matter how much you try to avoid them, one is gonna get you.[/QUOTE]

Yes, when the boat switched from sail to steam, and now motorized things get here quicker.

Without googling, I thought that the following two species were not indigenous to the USA:

1) Cockroach
2) Fire ant

The fire ant is all the way up here in Arkansas now and marching like Sherman to the sea. The Cockroach gets moved around towns from moving boxes and such. They did some extensive research in my area (closest town), and have narrowed it down to just a couple of houses where the cockroach started and them ka-boom!

It would not be unfathomable to think that bacteria, disease, and fungus could not jump the ponds. Interesting query..