I need opinions,please
 

I read many but not all of the threads about disease questions here since there are others who can also do that, yes,sometimes I do answer questions but here's what I wonder about.

Growing up on a farm, we call it a truck farm here in the east,we had many many acres of tomatoes,and my brother who is 3 years younger than I am worked hard in those fields.

But back then, and I'm talking the early 40's, there were no significant diseases of our tomatoes at all.All that we had were Colorado Potato Beetles,and dad would give us a can of kerosene to pick them off,which was a problem since if you know CPB's they act dead and fall to the ground.We got a penny for each one in the can. And be sure to look under the leaves and crush those orange egg clusters.

Dad had a backpack sprayer straps that went over his shoulders with stuff in it, and well I remember him spraying the summer and winter squash,but not the tomatoes.Maybe he did spray the tomatoes,b/c remembering and fact are two different issues.

We had many peach orchards that were there when my grandfather bought the farm,and three of them had been planted by the Shakers when they owned the land. and pear tree and plum trees also and I know he sprayed them each Spring.

Yes we also had BER, I didn't know that what it was called back then. Dad just said to pick off the ones with black bottoms and to toss them between the rows.

The above was in the 40's when I was a kid to the time I graduated from HS.

But when I moved back East from Denver where I was teaching and doing research,and that was in 1982 everything was different as to diseses.I met the local Cornell Coop agent,a wonderful lady who had been suggested I do so by my farmer friend charlie. She wanted to use my then large field to train others as she had been trained by Dr.Tom Zitter at Cornell, known world wide for his expertise of tomato diseases in how to diagnose diseases.She had two interns she was training,and I trailed after them as she pointed out the various bacterial and fungal diseases and how to diagnose them,and I followed with a notebook and made notes every time they came which was once a week for the whole season.

And that's where and how I learned about tomato diseases.When I was at the original Garden web I contacted the coop ext headquarters in many different states and asked them to rank from worst to least the diseases that were prevalent in their areas,and that turned out to be a very good idea since those in the south have many soilborne and other diseases that we in the north seldom see unless plants are ordered by nurseries and individuals to be shipped up from the south and are already infected/.


Back to now and asking what has happened between the late 30's through the 40's to 1982 and forward..

Why are there so many diseases now,so many pests and critters that can destroy theplants.When I read what some here are using now it confounds me.

But the larger question for me is why was it there were so few diseases and pests back then and now so many.

Any opinions are very welcome.

Carolyn, and yes,I have some ideas but I'd rather hear from others first.:)

That is easy there are more things shipped across the land than there used to be.
at one time everything was localized and now it isn't.
We are getting fruit from south America in our winter ans they are getting fruit from us in their winter.
Then there are the big box stored that have all but killed the local nurseries that once supplied the folks around them.
Instead of the Colombian exchange you could call it the Big Box exchange.

Worth

I'm going to step out on an unsteady branch here - The human population has grown so much causing more pollution. I think pollution causes diseases. Over time, diseases start becoming immune to treatments and they begin evolving from there. That's my thoughts.

I believe Worth is certainly on to something. To add to what he said, modern Farming practices changed during that time as well. Soil erosion, huge monoculture crops, and various pesticides misused, also contributed imo.

Pesticide resistance, poor soil conditions, habitat loss for beneficial insects and animals seems to play a large role. The Pheasants and Quail are no longer in any numbers to help control the insects. Giant monoculture crops can blow diseases for miles.

Here is Louisiana, with the mild winters, heat and humidity in summer we have always had more than our share of insects, including quite a few tropical ones that have popped up. So yes, we have more bugs, but the bugs (and weeds) are also more resistant to pesticides.

Carolyn, my Dad was born in 1932 and worked the family farm till 1950. At 85 he laughs at the organic regimen and talked about how they put DDT in my grandmother's old stockings and walked up and down the 20 acres shaking it on plants, and getting it all over them in the process. I try to explain to him, that our bodies have to contend with far more pollutants and population today. He'll here non of it. He still grows a garden, and will whip out whatever pesticide needed in a heartbeat. And yes, he considerable outgrows me and my mostly organic regimen.

Agree with Worth: a few disease ridden suppliers such as Bonnie plants trucking their poor quality transplants all over the continent.
People used to grow their own starts from seed.
As well, If your family was anything like mine, they had no patience for cruddy diseased plants. They didn't try to nurse them along and spread disease in the process the way people do today, spraying blight infested plants with milk and god knows what.etc etc allowing the spores to just fly for miles, they hauled them out and burned them because they had common sense.
Also, people grew what grew well in their area and didn't try to grow crops unsuited to the climate. if turnips grew well, you grew turnips and you didn't have time or energy to fuss around babying peppers in a northern garden. You had kids to feed and potatoes and turnips were a better crop for winter storage.
commercial monoculture plays a huge role as well.\Lots of reasons combined I think but I agree it is concerning for the future.
KarenO

[QUOTE=AlittleSalt;639700]I'm going to step out on an unsteady branch here - The human population has grown so much causing more pollution. I think pollution causes diseases. Over time, diseases start becoming immune to treatments and they begin evolving from there. That's my thoughts.[/QUOTE]

Salt on a microbiological stand point on disease and pollution that simply isn't so.
Our environment now in cities is a thousand times cleaner than it was 400 years ago.
The movies dont show it.
Take a moat for example.
The movies show someone falling into water.
In real life that water would be full of dead animals and human sewage including floaters and any other household waste.
You dont want to fall in the moat.:lol:
The streets were full of sewage and dead animals running down the street when it rained.
Nobody knew what a germ was, it was an act of some devil a witch or some god that caused sickness.
The only way to stop it was kill the witches or sacrifice.
In real life a virus will evolve to not outright kill a person fast.
It does the virus no good to kill the host before it can spread to others.
Many of not most of our common viruses came from pigs to chickens to us.
The black plague from a ground rodent that was as happy as as a clam.
When it spread from it to a rat it became a big problem.
Many of the houses had thatch roofs the rats lived in.
The change from that helped matters a lot.
The smell must have been overwhelming.

Worth

My two biggest tomato pests are the sweet potato whitefly and the brown marmorated stink bug. Both of them are invasive species that likely arrived in this country on poinsettias from China.

My high tunnel is turning into a disease nightmare. The first years, I never had to spray. I just sprayed Daconil in the high tunnel for the first time ever last week, and I am going to follow that with some copper sulfate tonight.

I wonder too if it isn't the varieties grown. A farmer would plant what had done well for him and his ancestors, indicating a degree of resistance to the local bibbits.

Now we all grow varieties that we find interesting, and which may not have bibbit resistance.

I am going to get beat all to devil here but used correctly DDT and diazinon were two of the best pesticides ever invented.
I still have some of the latter left and when I need to I use it sparingly and very diluted but not on anything I will eat.
This year was the first year I have used it in years.
My grape vines were infested with something and now they are gone.
DDT has saved millions of lives.
Lead arsenate was another one we used on beetles one year they were so bad.
Diseased plants I have no room for, they are gone.
Overly infested aphid plants are burned in the street.

Worth

I read [U]Silent Spring[/U] when I was a kid and Rachel Carson talked me into opposing DDT. Now, as I understand it, the "scientific" findings that were central to the argument have been debunked. But you'd never know it. Just last month a PBS ([I]Nature[/I]?) special used the old "thin raptor eggshell" illustration of why DDT is still banned. It really shouldn't be.

OTOH, bees were never part of the equation. I wonder about its effect on bee populations?

[B]Edit[/B]: Found a paper on this that is in PDF and won't let me select text from the Abstract. Bottom line is, they established 23 hives around a crop, then aerial sprayed DDT early in the morning when the bees weren't active. For the rest of the day the bees avoided the crop, then went back to work as normal. Overall effect on the bees: [B]none[/B].

[url]http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00288233.1958.10431570[/url]

Carolyn, I think it is not one of these things that have been identified by the other posts. I think it is a combination of all of them in different proportions in different areas of the country. The proliferation of the international trade has certainly exposed us to more maladies, but we refined some of those and sent them back. Bonnie Plants has procedures that produce some of their products in what are sort of "regional" centers that serve larger areas based on transportation and not on climate factors.

So, my opinion is that it is all of those things brought up already. Some places will be affected by some of them and other places all of them.

As children, we used to call DDT "Drop Dead Twice". :)

I will not hesitate to use whatever I can to fight the critters and other diseases for my crop. That's what you're supposed to do when you're at the top of the food chain.

[QUOTE=ContainerTed;639730]Carolyn, I think it is not one of these things that have been identified by the other posts. I think it is a combination of all of them in different proportions in different areas of the country. The proliferation of the international trade has certainly exposed us to more maladies, but we refined some of those and sent them back. Bonnie Plants has procedures that produce some of their products in what are sort of "regional" centers that serve larger areas based on transportation and not on climate factors.

So, my opinion is that it is all of those things brought up already. Some places will be affected by some of them and other places all of them.

As children, we used to call DDT "Drop Dead Twice". :)

I will not hesitate to use whatever I can to fight the critters and other diseases for my crop. That's what you're supposed to do when you're at the top of the food chain.[/QUOTE]

I agree. It certainly is a complex issue.

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.

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?

As sort of an example of the trade issue.
My neighbors from Chile told me when they were there the US fruit sucked and they thought it was just our fruit.
When they moved here they bought the stuff from there thinking it was better and thought it sucked, so they bought US grown fruit.:lol:
With this plant material moving around comes a lot of risk that cant all be inspected.
What we know as a tumble weed came from Russia of all places.


Worth

[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..