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shawnandmike

Blight or what?

shawnandmike
12 years ago

Been planting roma's for years now.. every year the plants look beautiful full and tons of blossoms. about July the plants leaves (whole branches) start to die off, the main stems seem hollow and wilty and I usually only get maybe 10-15 romas per tomato plant, with alot of them having rot issues(spots, or just fall off the plant). I water regularily and the plants are all caged. Talking with friends they say they yield twice as much fruit them me...By the end of season, all the branches are picked off by me as they all die and we are left with just the fruit. Is this Blight, disease or what? I rotate my plants every year and again it is usually just after the first tomatoes are picked that I start seeing the issues with the branches. Frustrated. Any ideas. I will try and post pictures.

Image link:

Comments (3)

  • jean001a
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    difficult to say with the small image. Also could use an overall view of the plant.

  • shawnandmike
    Original Author
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Doesn't allow for bigger pictures. Basically with the picture the fruit looks awesome but all the leaves die off, later in the season, then late in the season, the fruit start to get spots and die off as well. We only get about 10-15 per plant, which from what I hear is not normal. I can see all the flowers and there really should be alot more then there are.

  • lionheart_gw (USDA Zone 5A, Eastern NY)
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yeah, the picture is too small to really tell, and it would be helpful to see a partially afflicted leaf to see what the disease looks like before the leaves are destroyed. Are these last year's plants?

    The tomatoes are grown in USDA Zone 4? If that's the case, there are very few reasons to plant them in a new spot each year. This is usually done in warmer zones to try to avoid soilborne diseases, which isn't a big problem in the cold zones.

    The word "blight" is a generic word. There are 2 forms of blight that can hit tomatoes -- Early Blight (Alternaria solani) and Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans).

    Late Blight was virtually an epidemic in 2009 due to infected plants being shipped all over the country by one grower. Late Blight is pretty much fatal to the plants and usually kills a plant within a week. Once you see a late blight (LB) lesion, you might as well just bag up the plant, pull it out, let it toast in the sun for a few days, and put it in the garbage.

    Late Blight can be in the soil if infected potatoes are not removed. However, unless you have the new form of the disease on the West Coast or there have been infected potatoes around, it will NOT survive the winter in our zones. My tomatoes were wiped out by LB in 2009, but I planted in the same spot in 2010 and had a great tomato harvest with healthy plants.

    Early Blight is the more common and more manageable of the two and a slower-moving, less deadly fungus. Catch Early Blight early (lol) and you can keep it under control and harvest healthy fruits.

    Both Early Blight and Late Blight can be in the soil, but they also spread willingly by air and their spores can be deposited by wind and/or rain. Your plants can get either disease even if they are planted in a spot where no tomatoes have ever been planted for miles around.

    And, pay no attention to their names; Late Blight can show up early in the season, and Early Blight can show up late in the season. Really, they both can show up at any time of the season. :-)

    There are other diseases that could affect your plants, especially at the end of the season when the nights are cooler and the weather tends to be damp/humid. That's when septoria, another fungus, shows up sometimes. And anthracnose spores can show up and leave an indentation and a black stop in the fruits.

    So, it could be any number or combination of diseases. As you can see, it's hard to tell without knowing how the disease looked and progressed.

    Prevention is the best method of keeping healthy, productive plants. That means regular inspection and regular spraying of a fungicide containing chlorothalonil (Daconil Garden and a few other brands). If you're not trying to be an organic grower, this is the best fungicide that the home gardener can use. Anyhow, you need to spray about every 7 days and again after it rains.

    For organic growers, you might want to try a copper-based fungicide or check the forums for organic solutions. Again, you need to be fastidious about spraying and/or dusting.

    If disease pressures are high I alternate the use of both chlorothalonil and copper. But I get lazy by the end of the season, so some of my plants look like yours when the growing season is over. :-)