Tomato Blight!

Leopardlady

Hi guys,

We have blight on some of our tomatoes:eek:, is there anything i can do to save the rest, we have literally tonnes of tomatoes, and don't want to lose them all!!

Any help please, all the tomatoes are still green!

foxgloves

This happened to us the last couple of wet summers. You can get some Bordeaux mixture from any garden centre......it's a kind of powder that you mix with water in a spray bottle and then you spray it on liberally. That can slow the blight down enough to ripen some of your crop, but in our experience you'll need to use the tomatoes pretty quickly. I made lots of green tomato chutney to use during the rest of the year rather than risk losing so much of our crop. We don't have it yet this year. We've grown 'Ferline' which is supposed to be one of the last varieties to go down with blight if it's around, so supposed to be more chance of getting a crop ripe. Even if you pick all the tomatoes and try & ripen them indoors, you may find that the disease is already in the fruits and that they still start to get those horrible 'black death' patches. It's really frustrating & disappointing. We grow organically but understand can still use bordeaux mixture. Hope it helps set it back a bit, but you'll need to move fast. Burn all diseased stuff afterwards and don't let it get near your potato crop if you grow them too. Our sympathies & best of luck!

Leopardlady

Thanks Foxgloves, i will see about getting some bordeaux mix on the way home tonight, i think green tomato chutney may be the way to go. Luckily all my potatoes are up already this year, I think i was just hoping that the sun would come out for a few days and give us a chance. We are also growing organically although this is just down to us, not selling so no realy problem.

Thanks again

MunnyBoiler

Get some bordeaux mix!!!!!

I've suffered this problem with my tomatoes for the last two years so this year, despite my being an otherwise strictly organic gardener (I won't even use slug pellets) I have resorted to using bordeaux mixture this year and have been treating the plants.

From now on, do not compost any cuttings or old tomato plants and either burn them well away from your other homegrown plants or throw them away in your household waste. This prevent infection of your current other plants or in the future.

Hope this helps & good luck

Lotus-eater

This is what I wrote last year.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=13369077&highlight=lotus+blight#post13369077

I've never sprayed and if you catch them in time, I have always been able to either get rid, or keep down the blight to enable myself to harvest enough tomatoes.
I literally walk round my plants twice a day and remove any dodgy looking foliage, if the stem goes black, the whole plant come out.
Every year I do this and every year I manage to deal with the problem. The only time it ever gets away from me, is if the blight is too well entrenched in the plants to start removing leaves, for example if I haven't checked some plants for a few days.

ceridwen

I'm wondering how to spot tomato blight if I see it please...

My tomato plants keep getting brown spots on the leaves - and I duly take those leaves off quick (figuring that cant be good news) - but I dont know if this is actually tomato blight.

Any pointers please - as to how to tell?

Lotus-eater

ceridwen wrote: »

I'm wondering how to spot tomato blight if I see it please...

My tomato plants keep getting brown spots on the leaves - and I duly take those leaves off quick (figuring that cant be good news) - but I dont know if this is actually tomato blight.

Any pointers please - as to how to tell?

It looks like someone has spilled a drop of something which makes the leaves/stem look brown/grey, it then spreads from that initial area. Sometimes you can see a whole green area of plants and in one tiny area, you will see a load of dead and dying foliage, just like someone has spilled some acid over the area.
The areas turn black very rapidly and sometimes go slimy. It spreads with amazing speed.
If you have brown spots everywhere, you are probably ok, blight will look different to everything else and starts off in small areas. As with most things, experience is the key and you will get it, just takes time. I diagnose blight for all my neighbours because I've spent so long working out how to deal with it without chemicals, I can quite easily see it. Although sometimes it's still not always obvious to me to start with.

Leopardlady

Well some of the plants were quite bad, so i have pulled them all up, and they are in a pile on the patio, waiting to be bagged up and chucked away. I have taken 4kgs of green tomatoes off the plants, and OH is making green tomatoe chutney today, so hopefully not all lost. We do have a number of other plants and these seem to have only a few spots, so removing the spots and keeping my fingers crossed.

Thank you all soooo much for your help, it is very reassuring to hear all your experiences, i was confident of finding sensible, clever people here

Thank you

benz

Do you leave the tomatoes for a few days after spraying with Bordeaux Mixture because of possible chemical contamination, or do you pick and eat straightaway if ripe?

MunnyBoiler

If any toms are ripe, then pick them before you spray with the bordeaux mixture: it will be too late to same them anyway.

When you have treated with BM, just make sure you give any ripe toms you subsequently pick a jolly good wash before eating

balloo_2

is Dithane ok from wilkinsons