I was informed recently that the newly incurred disease of potatoes and tomatoes in New Zealand - Liberibacter - happily takes residence on poroporo as a wild host. Consternations! The bacterium can be spread from crop to crop via a weeny insect called a psyllid. Creature plus gut contents, which happened to include the bacterium, apparently crossed the biosecurity border at the same time, raising their ugly spectre in the tomato and potato community http://www.rhizobia.co.nz/downloads/Weir_CS23.pdf This adds a certain unpredictability to the success of the poroporo breeding enterprise.
Still, no looking back now. I have a fence-line of the plants growing, growing, growing like the weeds they are. The flowers are quite pretty actually, though the shrub's architecture is a little open and lanky. Not ideal for the back border of the vegetable garden - but this is science!
Speaking of plant diseases, I've just ripped up a rather large tomato plant which was showing odd symptoms of brown streaking on the stems. It has bucketed down with rain the past two days (yes, it must be nearly Christmas in Wellington) and the symptoms have spread to leaves and flowering stems. It had lots of unripe fruit, but it had to go, lest it bring into disrepair the good health and integrity of the other tomatoes in the garden. Being a recent convert to the alluring world of plant phytopathology, I can't quite pick whether it's Early blight, a nasty bacterial canker or viral. Maybe someone else can diagnose from the picture below? I will be sterilising my secateurs with meths at the next available opportunity.
