Here is something you might find interesting... My garden had plenty of early and late blight and septoria leaf spot. The following year I installed a hoop house over half of it and planted tomato plants inside and out (8 in/10 out). I sprayed/coated the outside plants several times (during wet periods) with a well known product used to control these diseases. The inside plants were treated only once (lower leaves only). Soil was the same inside and out (top quality and ammended-well with organic compost). The plants in the hoop made it all the way to freeze disease free! No blight at all inside. The outside plants, well, they were pretty much toast about 45 days earlier. The hoop house makes it sooooo much easier to garden. Never had to worry about pruning wet foliage (as it was often wet outside from the morning dew and rainstorms). The hoop house was not sealed off. It was about 50% open (no side or end walls). The plastic on top kept the direct rain off but there was some splashing along the sides. (I use leaf mulch to keep the soil from splashing up the stems). I can go on-an-on about the benefits of the hoop house but perhaps best is the reduction in plant disease. (but gardening during thunderstorms is pretty cool too!) My overall production was up more than 50%. And I suspect that with the dry and sunny conditions inside the hoop structure this winter (off-season), the bacteria and molds won't stand a chance (but I will still rotate anyway). One note, I trained my tomato plants to a rope attached to the top of the hoops. It grew vine-like plants vs. bushy plants you get on cages. It keeps the foliage drier and blight at bay. I am now less concerned about growing heirloom varieties. I hope I didn't get off topic.

How much of a safety factor is built into the recommended processing times? The times provided in various modern canning books tend to be very sweeping in some ways yet specific in others. For example, vegetable pressure-canner processing times range from asparagus (25min) to whole kernel corn (55 min). Yet dried beans processing times don't very except for container size. If I understand correctly, the goal is to get the internal temperature of the item to 240deg (achieved by venting your canner completely and bringing the pressure to 10psi @STP) I've read on some websites that only 4 minutes at the 240deg temperature is required to kill the spores. I suspect then that the different cooking times reflect the ability of the food item to internally transfer heat throughout the entire container (I understand this is largely due to density, plant chemistry, and the cell structure). So if my understanding is accurate, there should be different cooking times for dried beans based on: 1. bean density/moisture content. 2. size of the bean. 3. type of bean. Yes, it is much safer to make a generic recommendation and err on the side of safety. This said, unnecessary processing reduces the quality of the product. So I undertook an experiment: Last week, I processed a full canner load (18 * pint/500ml jars) of red kidney, turtle, and garbanzo beans. I vented vigourously for 10 minutes, and processed for 75 minutes at 11-13pounds. Tasting the beans the next day, I found them all to be way too soft. As well, the intergrity of each bean suffered (splitting, disintergrating, colour change). Today I did another load of the same beans but processed them for 60 minutes instead of the recommended 75min. The results: 1. The turtle beans texture and appearance in the jar was very close to commercially canned beans. And they tasted just the same. 2. Red kidney beans were softer than commercial products but looked the same. 3. Garbanzo beans were a wee bit harder compared to commercially canned beans but similar in firmness to non-canned samples. Appearance wise they were similar to the commercial products. Each of the beans exhibited different results from processing. These leads me to think that USDA should develop bean-specific processing times. Does anyone know what commercial canners do? And how much extra processing time is required to go say from a safety confidence level of 99.99% to 99.9999%

OH man, now I'm worried. Last year my neighbor definitely had LB in late August I think it was. Her plants all croaked in days. For like the tenth straight year she asked me for the same advice and once again I gave her the same advice but it's obvious she'll never use it. They are VERY nice people BTW. BUT, she buys her plants at HD, crowds them in cheek to jowl, overhead waters almost every evening, shoots MG at them as soon as they start to yellow, sprays the bejeebers out of them with bug killer, all things I DON'T do! Last year I must have been lucky...NO LB from her garden. I start all my plants from seed and so far this year they are doing great despite two nights of 34F, three days of 50MPH winds and a hailstorm! I sure hope this local HD doesn't have any LB infected plants for sale this year and my luck changes. She doesn't grow tomatoes but she does grow millions of beets. Please don't tell me LB can over winter in Beets!???

Alternating products will dramatically reduce the chances of strains of the organisms developing resistance. Can you say "Fungal MRSA" boys and girls? **** John, I spoke to that in my post just above yours, but MRSA? Whew, I dunno about that. LOL (Its very simple. If you are going to spray fungicides, it is completely irresponsible not to use at least two different products. If you are not going to do this, then don't spray anything at all.) I don't think I can agree with your comment about not spraying at all unless two alternating products are used. Yes, it's preferable to use two, as I also wrote above and as did mulio, but I don't think that using just one is all that bad if that's allthat someone has available to them. Through this Late BLight crisis we have here in the NE I can tell you that many normal sources for Daconil, copper, mancozeb, maneb, etc., are out of stock. New shipments of some are supposed to be arriving, per the remarks of others who have posted that online and it was also true where I live, but my local Agway was able to get what I wanted, but I had to wait quite a bit. Given a choice for those of us here in the NE who are in the target area for Late Blight right now, if only ONE product is available to someone I'd try and get Daconil. Late Blight is lethal, so I suggest getting that Daconil and using it. Just over the weekend I saw folks an hour to my south who posted pictures of their LB plants and since many local folks here where I live don't even know about the current LB problem I have no idea what spores might be wafting over my propert right now. Sigh. Carolyn,hoping that Freda gets here today to spray my plants for me b'c we're behind on th\je spray schedule.