[Ulysses]

In the northeast, at least in my little neck of the woods, alot of people growing tomatoes got hit by a 'blight' shriveling the leaves and making the fruit ugly.

I am hoping the blight ISN'T Botrytis! Most people just chalk it up to a bad season and move on- but we often have a more important crop on our minds...

Anyone else hit by 'blight'??? Has anyone actually used milk to knock this stuff down??? I have Greenscure but I am saving it for the patch...

[pangolin]

I can only say from experience in the uk but...blight is one of those diseases that once seen it is pretty much too late for a decent recovery. It's entirely different from botrytis and I'm not convinced any product will cure the symptoms.

The only measures I know of are copper based sprays through the season as a preventative. Blight has affected my and many others' toms in the uk this year (and previously) and it is recommended that affected plants are dug up and burned and the patch abandoned for both toms and potatoes for the following year (or 2).

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news! Especially my first post here...just saw a few views and thought I could make a contribution Any other q's just ask away, got a fair bit of experience with blight

[Clackamas Coot]

Originally Posted by Ulysses

In the northeast, at least in my little neck of the woods, alot of people growing tomatoes got hit by a 'blight' shriveling the leaves and making the fruit ugly.

I am hoping the blight ISN'T Botrytis! Most people just chalk it up to a bad season and move on- but we often have a more important crop on our minds...

Anyone else hit by 'blight'??? Has anyone actually used milk to knock this stuff down??? I have Greenscure but I am saving it for the patch...

Ulysses

I did some looking around Google.com on tomato blight as it's not an issue in my part of the world (the Pacific Northwest) which is a good thing since we're up to our ass with alligators as the expression goes with powdery mildew (a catch-all term for over 3,000 anaerobic fungal pathogens).

The tomato blight issue in the Northeast the past 2 years is the worst on record according to a number of articles including one in the New York Times (!!). One of the major issues with tomato blight is that the fungus lives in the soil meaning that the best solution is to relocate the garden next year.

I found that the usual solutions all had limited success - much like powdery mildew and related issues.

RE: Green Cure

An article at the USDA's National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service web site titled "Use of Baking SOda as a Fungicide" discusses the use of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) vs. potassium bicarbonate (GreenCure as one example). It's well worth reading.

GreenCure is a consumer-level product which uses potassium bicarbonate as the active agent. There are several others used by commercial growers in both agriculture and horticultural operations. Names like Remedy, MilStop, FirstStep, Armicarb, et al. are some that are readily available.

One thing to consider before plunking down hard-earned money for GreenCure is that sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is 80% effective vs. potassium bicarbonate (GreenCure) at a fraction of the cost.

You might want to look into using neem tree seed meal (aka neem tree seed cake) which has been shown to be effective against any number of garden problems. It can be dug into the soil or applied as a top dressing depending on your growing methods. Some folks (myself included) do not disturb the soil from one year to the next. A good book on this is 'The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming' by Masanobu Fukuoka

It's not much help but you might take some comfort in the fact that mildew and related problems are some of the most studied issues in agriculture and horticulture.

HTH

CC

[Alienate420]

I've grown a few hundred heirloom tomatoes in cages for the past few years in the northeast and I've done very little but fight blight, relatively successfully, with repeated spraying of Serenade, liquid copper and Dalconil. I finally gave up last week, it's just too much work constantly spraying and then pruning the infected vegetation off 300 large plants.

Only about 10 percent have outright died, but I'd say my harvests have been cut 50 to 70 percent, given all the lost vegetation and regeneration time. I've got a micro-farm where I can give each plant far more attention than a normal farm generally would. Most of the larger tomato farmers lost a lot more. Too much moisture...

I got his with the blight real bad. I am in the Northeast also.

A FOAF had early blight and it took all her tomato plants in about June. My blight came on around end of July. I harvested some, I would say about 30% of what I should have. Ijust threw out two 50 G bags of vines, rotten fruit, etc.

I've heard that it lives in the soil and heard that balanced soil will also keep it under control. I like Neem Seed meal or Neem idea. Neem is know to kill soil fungus (good and bad) so perhaps it kills the blight too?

Dunno, this is my first year gardening. Another FOAF has mature tomato plots year after year, never got hit my blight. She says it has to do with soil maturity. She composts her blighted vines and never has problems. A balanced soil shouldn't permit blight to occur, but when it takes hold--look out.

[maryjohn]

the big thing this year was late blight according to news reports. We got spared.

I personally suspect there is little you can do if the weather patterns favor it. The NE got creamed.

[VerdantGreen]

blight is spread in water droplets so the best way to avoid it is to grow your toms in a greenhouse which all but removes the risk of blight. if you have to do it outside a polythene sheet draped over the supports - made into an open tent to keep the rain off will help and keep them away from potatoes which are in the same family and also get bight.

cheers

V.

[nv1117]

I live in the midwest and was hit very hard with both early and late blight.All of the heirloom varietys were complelty wiped out ,the early girls were effected but not as bad.I rotated so hopefully this will help

[bong_chat]

Last year was just a bad year overall for tomatoes in the midwest it seemed. I have a lot of gardening friends and none of them had any luck with maters. The temps were never right, and way too much rain. I had everything from blossom end rot to kids breaking into my yard and smashing what was left of my crop. But that's a different story. It didn't seem to matter if you grew in pots or the ground, nothing really was going well for maters. BUT my snow peas, cucumbers, and cabbage took off like bullets.

So this year I"m doing something different. Building some raised bed gardens for my yard to help with the drainage. And just cause I think it'll look cool in my yard. So far this year is looking a lot more stable than last, so we'll see. Haven't checked the farmers almanac yet though.

[baan]

Was growing big plants right next to the tomatoes when the toms started dying, the plants were uneffected. At this point I'm more worried how my toms will do than how the weeds will do, as far as molds and pests go.