Weather Taking BLTs and Grilled Veggies Off Many Menus

First posted on 08-17-2009

Mary Hightower, Extension Communications Specialist

Record rainfall and high temperatures are forcing Lisa Ferris to take homegrown vegetables off the menu.

“This was an optimistic gardening season at first, that has turned into frustration on a daily basis,” said Ferris, an extension instructor with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. She has a plot full of tomatoes and other vegetables.

In the past four weeks, Ferris and her husband, Perry have found:

* Split tomatoes, or “if it’s not the splitting, it’s the yellow striped armyworms or hornworms that appear quickly and attack the plants. The plants are being affected by blight as well.”

* Green beans that are flowering, but have stunted beans

* Zucchini that blossom, but bear no fruit.

* Cucumbers that “started off with grotesque contortions that are just now becoming recognizable as cucumbers.”

“This has seriously impacted our ability to enjoy BLTs and grilled vegetables from our garden,” she said with a laugh.

Don Plunkett, Jefferson County extension staff chair for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, has been hearing similar tales of woe.

“The home gardeners I am hearing from are seeing tomato diseases and peas that are beginning to sprout in the pod,” he said.

“I had a 90-year-old gardener come in with a tomato disease situation,” he said. The gardener “was sharing with me how bad they look after a 5-inch rain last week.”

In addition to tomatoes, melons also have been developing splits.

Like farmers, home gardeners put a lot of hard work and money into their plots.

“Home gardeners invest a lot more on plants and fertilizers and now their gardens are just in bad shape,” he said. “Weeds took over some of the gardens last week. The rain just kept people out of their gardens, but the weeds kept growing.”

On the research front, the abundance of water has wreaked havoc on the Jefferson County Master Gardener test plots.

“Our Master Gardener plots are showing root diseases that are just tearing us up out there,” Plunkett said. “We have 10 varieties planted, designed for testing for high yield, and we wanted lines that could be purchased locally, but it’s messed up because of the disease factors,” he said.

He’s also seeing aphid damage to vines and tender pea pods.

Jim Robbins, extension horticulture specialist-ornamentals, for the division, said the combination of very wet or flooded soils and high summer temperatures create a dangerous combination.

“With high temperatures, the plant is requiring lots of water, and the soil is loaded with water - in some cases too much; when soil is flooded, the water pushes oxygen out,” he said. “The roots require oxygen to function, so, even though there’s lots of water available, the uptake mechanism is damaged.

“It’s kind of like dying of thirst in a swimming pool,” Robbins said.

The moisture and high temperatures makes conditions prime for lots of diseases, such as leaf spot or root rot diseases all kinds of plants including vegetables, turf, and ornamentals.

For more information about diseases in the home garden, contact your county extension office, visit http://www.uaex.edu or http://www.arhomeandgarden.org/links.htm#Diseases.