Man, I got scans on your fingerprints now Doof! ":^) Nice pictures though.

You probably can not reverse the damage already done, but have you noticed that they keep on putting on new growth on the tops?

It does just take a little getting used to on the soak hoses and mulch and does not require nearly as much watering as you are probably used to. I just deep soak my rows one to three times per week, depending on the amount of rainfall, which has been too much this year. Too much water has taken it's toll on my garden too, but it came from the sky, not through a hose.

Don't get discouraged, use it as a learning experience and look forward to better times. The tomatoes on your plants will probably go ahead and ripen O.K.
Bill P.

looks like early blight...if you go to google images and enter "early blight tomato stem," you'll see some familiar images.

but i have difficulty telling the difference between early blight and septoria...so, if you google "septoria tomato stem," it might look even more familiar.

if you have a really good nursery in town, you might want to bring some leaf and stem samples to them and they will be the best people to diagnose your problem for you.

Heh, the gardening centers around here are useless. I asked the one that I thought would be most competent, Armstrong's, what I should do, and they recommend using copper for any fungus problem. I'm leary of copper, having had to write a long paper when I was in college about the Romans and their copper-glazed pottery and their mad emperors, so I'm going to pass on that. That's my only tip of the hat to being "organic," because, really, I'm not opposed to drowning them in Zyklon-B at the moment if it would do the trick. I'm planning to order some Mancozeb from Ebay, because I have heard that mentioned here as effective when Daconil doesn't perform. Mancozeb isn't apparently for sale to home gardeners here in California. Maybe that's actually a good sign. I don't care if I glow in the dark, heh.

It may not be obvious from the pics, but I really think I have multiple problems. Early blight, yeah, but Septoria too, (that birdshot look) in some of the leaves, in particular on my Marianna's Peace) and something else where they were getting soft kinda fuzzy white spots on the surface of the leaves.

I hate to sound like a hypochondriac about it, but this really did turn out to be a huge cluster**** this year.

I am looking at the remaining green whips on my Burgudy Traveler and thinking of trying to go a couple of cuttings. I have tried the cuttings-thing before with nothing but wilted dead cuttings to show for it, but it might be my best option, because really they were the best tomatoes I grew this year. The Druzbas are hanging in there but they aren't particularly good tomatoes. My Eva Purple Ball has already passed on, yanked out by the roots to ripen in my garage because there weren't any suckers left worth trying to save.

(Good news... my Arapaho blackberries are growing new canes like crazy all of a sudden... I had just about given up hope on them. The older canes are producing a few fruit, but they are big and quite tasty. Raspberries still to come...)

Doof, my first attempts at rooting cuttings were not successful either. At Kristi's urging, I tried it again earlier this year and both that I tried were perfect. Just have a 16 Oz cup of good potting soil ready, find a good, healthy piece to cut the sucker or growing tip off of and plunge it into the potting soil up to the point you want it to be. Be sure to water well and keep it in the shade for a few days, keeping it wet. One of mine did not even wilt.

I was also impressed with the thornless Arapaho Blackberries. Mine are really covered with berries and keep on blooming and putting on more. I am going to buy several more this winter and put them out.
Bill P.

You may also have late blight, which affects both tomatoes and potatoes, as does early blight.

As Bill notes, if the tops of your plants are still green and healthy, you may be able to stop the blight-spread any further by treating the plants with a fungicide, and next year, begin the treatments as soon as the plants go in the ground as a preventive step. If you don't go totally organic, Ortho Multi-Purpose Fungicide is recommended as relatively safe by several sites. (See the site below.) Its primary ingredient is Chlorothalonil, which can be toxic to humans under some conditions, so you takes your chances with it.

If you want to go organic, Attra makes this statement:

"Organic growers might try certifier-approved contact herbicides such as some of the vinegar or citric-acid based organic herbicides (Bioganic, Burnout, AllDown Green Chemistry Herbicide,®), generic vinegar and/or citric acid formulations, or a flame weeder."

Here is a link that might be useful: Purdue Plant and Pest Diagnostic Laboratory

Sorry, that quote is about organically destroying infected plants with natural herbicides, not how to get rid of blight!

Here's the information about alternative controls if you don't want to use copper, which is also discussed just above this quote:

"Compost tea, applied as a foliar spray, is also reported to suppress late blight. In a German study (16), compost teas made from either horse manure or cow manure were sprayed on potato foliage as a control measure against late blight. These teas were used either alone or with additional microorganisms added to the mix. The tea treatments were compared to three fungicides or to a water control. The compost tea alone was applied seven times per week. Compost tea with additional microbes was applied 11 times weekly. Fungicides were applied five times during the growing season. Results from the experiment can be seen in Table 1. As you can see, compost + microbes was equal to Ridomil MZ fungicide in reducing diseased leaf area and produced similar high yields, as did two other fungicides. Ciluan and control produced the lowest yields. Results comparing compost tea alone and compost tea with added microorganisms, compared to a water control, are shown in Table 2. The addition of microbes to the compost tea was very beneficial, bringing yields from the mixture up to double that of the tea alone or the control." Organic Alternatives for Late Blight Control in Potatoes (also tomatoes).

Your pics look like my tomatoes! This is my first year growing them and they seem to have all kinds of problems, although I am still getting some tasty tomatoes off of them. The descriptions on the internet of tomato plant diseases sound too similar to understand what I need to do so I do sympathize with you!

I'm thinking the Romans used lead-based glazes on their pottery, not copper. I could be wrong. But lead generally was used as the flux on low-fire pottery.

Hard to tell as eventually all diseases coalesce into larger areas and then the leaf dies altogether. Your totally dead leaves would be impossible to diagnose at that point. Plus effects of drought or nutrient def. mimic diseases.

Did it start as yellow blotches?

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r783100411.html

Or as spots? Above mentioned Early Blight is a possibility--the concentric circles are missing in those shots but it can still be EB.

With septoria you would see black spots (pycnidia) fruiting bodies in the lesion.

This about covers everything in Calif.
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/selectnewpest.tomatoes.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Pic of Powdery mildew (leveillula type)