Mystery Plant Damage

06-07-2010 • waronyou

A mystery is unfolding across MidSouth farms. Something is killing crops, trees, even weeds and nobody can explain why. Farmers are scratching their heads and some are worried their crops may be lost to the mysterious plague. It’s happening along a large swath of land near the Shelby and Tipton county border along Herring Hill Road and elsewhere near the Mississippi River bottoms. Tiny dots appear to have burned onto leaves of all types of plants, and they appear different depending on the plant. On corn stalks, the dots seem to turn white in the center. On other plants, a white dust speckles the leaves and then destroys the green life underneath. “We found it all in the herbs, in the flowers, in the plum tree, in the weeds,” said organic farmer Toni Holt. “It’s apparently in everything.” Holt grows organic produce that she sells at area farmers’ markets. As she and other farmers inspect the new growth covered in the perplexing plague, they fear their entire