Experts ask gardeners' aid in potato blight

Experts are urging backyard gardeners to look for signs of a spreading crop disease and destroy infected plants to help farmers whose East End fields of potatoes and tomatoes are being devastated.

The disease, called late blight, which caused Ireland's Great Potato Famine more than 150 years ago, has spread to the South and North forks in recent weeks, worrying farmers whose crops are being harmed at the height of the growing season.

Early symptoms include dark blotches on leaf tips and plant stems. White mold may appear under the leaves.

Late blight, which affects potatoes and tomatoes, resurfaced sometime in June, most likely in the Sagaponack area, experts say. Since then, it has hopscotched its way over both forks -- as far east as Southold and East Hampton.

Cornell University horticulturists are asking home gardeners to look out for the blight and destroy affected plants to try to halt further spreading of the disease.

Meg McGrath, a Cornell plant pathologist, said the blight most likely started in a homeowner's garden.

Controlling it in smaller plots is an effective way of keeping it out of farming communities, McGrath said. Last year, a group of women noticed the signs of blight on their plants in an East Setauket church garden. Destroying them stopped the disease from spreading, McGrath said. It didn't show up again until late September.

There is no real count of how many farms are affected, but that "by the end of the summer, every potato and tomato will be affected" if the disease is not managed, McGrath said.

"They know they can't afford to lose their crop," she said.

This is the third consecutive year that late blight has come to Long Island, and this year's outbreak seems to be the most severe, McGrath said. The cool, rainy days of early summer may have hastened the disease, which travels more efficiently during rainy and cloudy days.

Joseph Gergela, director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, said the blight comes on top of a weak selling season, where "prices are down a bit, and farm stand sales are off a bit."

The disease traveled across the Atlantic from North America to cause the Great Irish Famine of 1845-49, wiping out potato crops and leading to the starvation deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

This year, the pain will be felt by the farmers in their wallets, McGrath said. She said one farmer she spoke with said the fungicide used to kill the spores costs about $6,000 every time he sprays.

"They will have to absorb the cost of this," she said. "How often can you live through this?"