Blight

I'm having a time with this Blight. Has anyone ever tried any of the chemicals made for this? I'd be interested in your opinion.

Moss,

Blight is a general term many folks use to say they have a sick tomato plant.

So it would really help if you'd describe what the symptoms are on your plants in order to see if any treatment might be reasonable.

Tomato diseases are usually divided into foliage diseases which affect primarily the leaves, and occasionally the stems and the fruits, depending on which specific disease it is, and systemic diseases, which can affect all plant parts.

It would be good if you could indicate roughly where you garden in zone 5a since tomato diseases are often restricted to certain areas.

Methink in a zone 5a that you're probably dealing with one of the more common foliage diseases but there are a couple of systemic diseases that also might be at work.

So please do share here everything about how your plants started to look sick, and leaf color changes, any spots on the leaves, any wilting, and if there are leaf spots p[lease describe what those spots look like, and color and size and if they have any yellow halos, etc.

I know it may sound like a lot, but bacterial foliage infections cannot be treated but fungal ones can and the only way to tell the difference is by what you share in terms of what you see.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn

I've researched Tomato Blight, as well as Septoria Leaf Spot. I've checked out every photo I could find about both, and I'm convinced I have both of them. I do not leave the debris of the vines in the garden, nor do I put it in my compost bins,,,I burn it. I mulch to prevent water from splashing up onto the leaves. I do not overhead water, but use soaker hoses. I've been trying for years to control this *organically*, and now I'm sick of no tomatoes and am willing to try chemicals, if they work. I found some stuff at Earl May, for tomato blight, that has the ingredients required from both of these awful diseases. I just wanted to know if anyone had experience with the chemicals and if they helped/worked.

Yes it does may be to late this year but try it spray about once a week diacal (sp) is as about as safe as they get

Thanks Dave719, for a fellow Missourian. Wish I knew of a way to rid my soil of this. I've moved my veggie garden so many times I now have 6 large gardens. I'm running out of space! I'll try the chemical. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Blight? Tell me about it.

I grew 220 tomato plants last year - all rare heirlooms. Near every one went down with blight on August 19th - the peak moment of a Beaumont Point, when temperature stays above 75ºF for three consecutive days and humidity is above 80%.

(It's also called the Smith Period, with different criteria.)

Funny but... all my currant and cherry tomatoes were entirely unaffected. Even though some touched the blighted plants.

Yay, I had sprayed Bordeaux solution thrice in the preceding weeks. Didn't help.

Bordeaux solution merely delays the spread of blight. If you have it, it's no real help at all.

Solution: this year I have sown only very early tomatoes, so I can get them out before the mid-August blight period hits.

Plus... I have grown some in the greenhouse. Tomatoes grown under cover get less blight, because the spores don't get to them so easily.

No point in changing your soil. Blight spores carry on the wind. Just change your variety of tomato!

It's strange, but my neighbor, who's garden is about 30 foot from my veggie garden, doesn't have blight. That makes me think its in the soil. Surely if it was airborne it would be in his garden as well?

Rose i seen you were in MO too i will tell you that i've planted later than normal the last two years like the 20 or 25 of may instead of the 5 and i haven't had near the problem with blight I don't have any ideal why but it might be something to think about I also have put rabbit droping on the garden in the fall and left it there all winter between the two it has been much better

So it would really help if you'd describe what the symptoms are on your plants in order to see if any treatment might be reasonable.

Moss,

And I really think it would be great if you'd describe exactly what symtoms your plants have.

As I said above there is no one disease called Tomato Blight and if your plants have a systemic infection, (there are several with the word Blight in the name, as opposed to the foliage one called Early Blight (Alternaria), and not a foliage infection, then no amount of Daconil ( Ortho Garden Disease Control) is going to help.

Carolyn

We set out all of our tomato plants (1200) on May 28. So far no blight, beautiful plants. Picked the first ones yesterday. (Early Girls). Later varieties have nice large tomatoes on them, probably a week to 10 days from ripening.
We don't baby our plants at all. They are in rows 6½ ft apart and 28" apart in the row. Culitivated twice with a front mount cultivor on a farm tractor. Hand weeded rows once!
Bernie

All of my 26 tomato plants have been plagued with yellow and black-spotted small leaves. They start from the bottom and are working there way up. I keep clipping them and throwing them out. The tomatoes seem to be smaller than they should be, but other than that, unaffected. They are planted in landscape fabric and I only water from below by watering can. I am in a community garden and see other gardeners with the same problem, not all though. Didn't have this problem last year. Any ideas how to treat? Thanx.

I've used a chemical from Earl May, which is called Tomato Blight,,,the container is out in the garden shed and not available to me right now. It seems to be working. The spread of the blight has slowed and the plants are again blooming. I spray them every Saturday. I'll try to remember to bring the container inside so I can post the ingredients.

Thanx MossRose, I'll check it out.

Celia, what you have is not what I'd describe as blight. So I don't know if MossRose's chemical marked Tomato Blight would work. If you had blight, you'd know it! Brown/purple 'bruises' on the stems and swollen yellow/brown postules on the fruit.

Celia,

If you say black, rather than brown lesions and the black lesions are regular in shape then it sounds more like Bacterial Speck or Bacterial Spot.

Early Blight (Alternaria) or Septoria Leaf Spot, both fungal, have very irregular brownish lesions.

For fungal foliage infections Daconil is super (Ortho Garden Disease Control)

But there really is nothing good for bacterial foliage infections. A copper product such as Kocide can be tried, but according to my organic certified friends, it's not that good.

Since the bacterial foliage infections usually progress much more slowly than the fungal ones I've never felt the need to treat for them and have always had a harvest.

A complicating issue is that most folks don't have just one foliage disease; uaully two or more. It happens. All new foliage infections are initiated by airborne means, altho reinfection from a previous season can occur from splashback.

For the reason that many foliage diseases are out there, most folks I know start regular spraying with Daconil about two weeks after plants are put outside.

Carolyn

I'm not sure what we have. The OSU extension agent checked it out and found it to be some kind of pepper blight. It seems to be progessing at a rapid rate. I have been pulling off lower foliage everytime I visit the garden. Most are saying that it was due to the wet and cool weather we had at the beginning of the growing season. I'll just hang in there and hope it doesn't affect the fruit.