EB Issue Driving Me Mad!!!

Been gardening for the bulk of my 60+ years.......... Never had an issue with EB until the last 4-5 years...... I practice all the prevention methods, drip irrigation,mulching,fungicides, etc, etc to no avail...... I propagate all my plants (Jet Star, Celebrity, Mountain Fresh Plus) from seed, so I know their origin....... I've tried moving my plants from my vegetable garden to a raised bed, only to have the same issue.... Excessive rain can promote EB, but Kansas has been bone dry for years.....

Now I realize that EB is air borne & I take all precautions when removing plants at the end of the season, so I don't have any carry over, but in spite of my best efforts, I see once vibrant plants succumb to EB........ It's gotten to the point that I have to plant 3-4 times the plants I'd normally plant just to get adequate tomatoes for my personal use....

The one thing I haven't tried is spacing my plants further apart to increase air circulation between plants... I've always spaced plants 2 feet apart in the past, but this season I'm considering 3-4 feet as an act of desperation.....

Can anyone suggest something I haven't tried? This EB thing has me on the ropes!!!

Just to be sure, EB=Early Blight?

F1 hybrids which you mentioned above with just two exceptions have no tolerance to Foliage diseases such as EB. And those two exceptions are onlyof use tolarge scale commercial growers who can then spray every 8 to 9 days rather than every 5 days.

Spores of S. alternari, EB ,are transmitted via air and/or embedded in water droplets or even if sprinklers are used and while you said it's been dry in your area I'm sure that you water your tomato plants.

How far from you are others growing tomatoes,whether in back yards or on commercial farms, and I ask in terms of knowing how far spores can travel which may be an important issue.

Mulching can help to a limited extent if spores have dropped to the ground in a previous year and the mulch prevents what's called splashback reinfection.

If it were me I'd start spraying with a good antifungal and for me that would be Daconil ( chlorothalonil), which is not organic but has lower toxicity than many of the substances classified as organic, such as Rotenone. If you decide to do this you want the concentrated solution which is about 28% chlorothalinol.

I was raised on a farm and I'm 75 and still alive and was helping out my father when I was about 6 yo and I don't remember any major problem with foliage diseases back then, and as toBER, we didn't have a clue about that, we just knew to remove any fruits with black at theblossom end.

Carolyn