A fungal disease, called late blight, is affecting potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants throughout the Northeast all the way up into Canada. The outbreak has been blamed on prolonged rainy, cool conditions. Big box store garden center create an environment for the disease to take hold by holding plants closely packed.
Fungal disease has had historical impact beyond just the Irish potato famine.
This same cool, wet weather in the summer of 1789, occurred just prior to the French Revolution, caused an ergot blight in the rye crop of Brittany and other parts of France. This blight caused hallucinations, paralysis, abortions and convulsions and came after a very cold winter that had created severe food shortages which are thought to have lead to civil unrest.
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.htmlThe LSD like effects of ergot may have caused hallucinations leading up to the Salem witch trials.
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/ergot.htmCHICAGO (Reuters) - Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.
"Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States," said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University's extension center in Riverhead, New York.
She said the fungal disease, spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United States.
"Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart and Lowe's are some of the stores the plants have been seen in," McGrath said in a telephone interview.
Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S.