Gardening: New year brings a new destructive disease affecting tomatoes, peppers

A new-to-us plant disease has popped up, causing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take defensive action. The disease is known as tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV). It is no light matter, for it’s devastating to tomatoes and peppers, hosts of the disease. It’s transmitted by seed and mechanically by tools touching sap, or even by hand. A friend in the United Kingdom says bumblebees can also transmit it from a diseased plant to a healthy one.

It was first reported in Israel in 2014, and then spread rapidly to China, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Until November 2019, seeds have been easily swapped and mailed from gardener to gardener all over the world, but the need to stop this disease’s spread is stopping this global sharing. Those types of seeds will be prohibited. This means, of course, that folks will not be able to legally bring in pepper and tomato seeds they’ve acquired in other countries.

Importers of seeds and/or plants will be required to furnish phytosanitary certificates that the plant parts are free of this disease. Canadians buy seeds and plant parts from Mexico, so they also will have to supply phytosanitary guarantees for export to the U.S.

The disease reveals its presence on tomato plants with mosaic patterning and a ferny growth of leaves, and fruit may develop brown dead spots or fail to become fully colored. Fruit also is produced smaller and more wrinkled (rugose) than it should. Leaves of pepper plants may look bubbled and show a mosaic pattern, and pepper fruit may fail to develop, dropping as immature. Neither tomatoes nor peppers with this disease are marketable. Photos show the diseased fruits to look quite unappetizing, but there’s been no literature discussing edibility of infected plants.

This disease and import prohibition is especially unfortunate, as plant breeders in other countries are marketing improved peppers and tomatoes for private and commercial uses. Some of the best early varieties are coming from cold countries such as the Ukraine.

▪ You have a lot of time now to plan your gardens, both ornamental and kitchen beds. If you didn’t map your ornamental beds so you know the location of perennials, you should wait until they begin to show before planning other planting. Also, some ornamentals seed themselves, and it’s always interesting to see what comes up where.

If you’re acquainted with the sight of newly germinated weeds, you can scrape their tiny leaves off, and they won’t grow. Tiny back-to-back hearts, for instance, are germinated mallow (buttonweed) seeds. Two blades of grass, one taller than the other, usually means crabgrass. Soft gray-green fuzzy straplike (lanceolate) leaves belong to kochia, a weed that grows to at least a meter high. Other common weeds in my garden are dandelion, sow thistle, pigweed and quackgrass.

If you don’t want to build raised beds, you can have the advantages of raised beds by designating pathways that are never deviated from. Do not step on raised beds or those beds you plant on, preserving uncompacted soil. Usually those parts of beds that are planted on are higher than paths, because the paths are compacted by gardeners’ feet and wheelbarrows.

Raised beds usually warm up faster in spring than the natural soil surface, and may be planted more densely (bed planting) than row planting. Row planting started eons ago because of oxen, horse or mule plowing patterns. Since water is expensive, many gardeners in this area prefer to use drip watering in garden beds, but drip systems usually provide water every 12 inches or so. When the gardener sows directly into a bed, drip watering has to run long enough to wick all over the bed to moisten all seeds. An alternative is using soaker hoses (made of recycled tires) that seep their entire length.

Overhead watering should not even be an option, for wet foliage is an invitation to disease.

This story was originally published January 3, 2020 at 5:24 PM.