Blight

Is that how it typically works? It starts in FL and moves north as the season progresses? That's spooky.

The Blight Tracker link camprn posted shows where late blight has been reported. To find a forecast of when late blight may reach your particular area, use the Blitecast site. Select the agricultural reporting station closest to you for most accurate forecasting. This chart is for the Northeast and has stations from NJ to ME, although unfortunately there are very few stations in NH and ME. What the Blitecast is doing is making a calculation based on average temperature and hours that foliage is wet.

When the Severity value exceeds 18, you are supposed to start preventive spraying and then repeat at intervals during the season. Be aware that for most of New England, the severity value is now waaay past 18, flashing red, danger zone, even if blight has not yet appeared.  I sprayed copper on my peppers and tomatoes Monday, then we promptly had a huge thunderstorm Monday afternoon and another on Tuesday.

By the way, Cornell has one of the best and most prolific ag extension programs around. Their info page on late blight is here, with really great photographs of affected plants and fruits and links to other resources. An interesting article on their site is this one suggesting that planting even a few potatoes in your home garden is putting all your tomatoes at risk from late blight because potatoes are so susceptible.

If you are lazy like me, the UMass Vegetable Newsletter I mentioned here provides a weekly update on latest locations of diseases and pests and information on what you should be doing about it this week, including identification and treatment. So you don't have to actively track all these web sites, their professionals do it for you. Of course, their focus is MA (which works well for me, particularly since a reporting station is located in my town), but it should be generally applicable to New England.

Sticky worthy!


Because of the potential of spreading blight I always plant potatoes far away from my tomatoes.

Late blight sounds bad. I guess it hits Fla. then proceeds to the NE? I am battling early blight and septoria leaf spot/blight. I had Southern blight last yr, and I guess I chose the wrong treatment to prevent the early/septora types. Pretreatment is good, but, I had lots of rain and it attacked while we had 4 days of rain. I looked from the house to the garden and could see that it had struck! Tomato plants are still alive, fruit on, but all leaves are gone. If they live, I will have to provide shade for the fruits. I've started some more plants, but don't know whether it is worth it or not.
Jo

littlejo, looking at the map, it doesn't look like it's hit the GA/SC area this year, at least not so far.

jazzycat wrote:littlejo, looking at the map, it doesn't look like it's hit the GA/SC area this year, at least not so far.

OR it has yet to be reported for that area. Jo, I suggest you ring your extension service and let them know of your troubles.

Late blight is a wind-borne fungal disease. If you go to the Blight Tracker map and at the top select Occurrence Map>2012 you can see where it occurred in reportable amounts last year. GA/SC aren't affected because its too dam hot in those states. Late blight likes cool damp weather and tends to start in the more temperate mid-Atlantic states and moves northward on the wind. However, if we keep getting these weird weather patterns with cooler weather down south, you never know.

New England has always had late blight around but I guess conditions were never right to make it bad. It is something I never worried about. In 2009 it cropped up with a vengeance and wiped out tomato and potato crops, particularly those of small and organic farmers since they couldn't use the heavy duty fungicides. A lot of blame was put on infected Bonnie Plants tomatoes from Alabama, the ones sold at Wal-Mart, Lowes, and HD. Since then it has been a big problem every year, but not as bad as 2009. The moral of that story is, grow your own seedlings or buy from a local greenhouse.

dvelten wrote:The moral of that story is, grow your own seedlings or buy from a local greenhouse.

+1

dvelten, we do it get it, but not this time of year. I know someone who had to destroy 3/4 of his crop (he was growing to sell). But that was a 6-8 weeks ago, and we've had unseasonably cool weather this year, up until a few weeks ago.

 

My tomatos have lots of leaves / branches like this.... help what is it?  Blight?

ttx, I moved your post to the Blight thread. Read through and you may find treatment options.

I guess that means it is blight?

ttx599 wrote:I guess that means it is blight?

I am not sure what you mean..... Have you tried to determine if its blight or septoria? Do you see any brown lesions on the stalk or stems of the plant? Did you check the blight tracker? I cannot make your photo larger to get a better look.

ttx599, Looks more like bacterial speck or spot. Look for photos of those to compare.

I don't know for sure it is blight... trying to determine.... all the bottom stems / leaves look like these.  There are tomatoes that are still green and the main stem doesn't show any problems.  I have been trying to research what it is but I can't find a clear analysis.

ttx599, your tomato leaves look like mine did.  With help from the forum, I determined that it was bacterial Septoria Leaf Spot.  Here is the link to my thread.

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t16228-is-this-leaf-spot-on-my-tomatoes

I used diluted hydrogen peroxide on mine. 1 1/2 tsp per cup water and sprayed on.  They are hanging on, so we will see how they do.  Good Luck.
Madge

Since blight spores can blow around for miles it's a wonder any of us can grow tomatoes here in the sloppy-muggy state of Ohio along with so many other muggy places.  Think I'll be extra appreciative for every fruit I get.

My tomato plants have late blight.   I found some on the aubergine as well.  I will be spraying what is left of the foliage with copper.

Blight resistant tomatoes for 2014.
http://www.growveg.com/growblogpost.aspx?id=334

Thanks for the info and link camp!

Last year was the first time we ever had late blight  it spread fast and killed our lush full of tomato later harvesting tomatoes.....we were so devastated   we would of had a ton of tomatoes last year......we looked at our back neighbors, side neighbors and down the street neighbors and they all had the blight as well.....

we are thinking about trying the new  *super-resistant 'Iron Lady'* from the article ...we were not planning on buying any more tomato seeds for this years, because we really like the ones we planted last year.....the plants were great....its the blight that was the problem.....so again thanks for posting this....it will be worth buying more seeds to see if we can have more tomatoes this year   hope this one taste good LOL

happy gardening
rose

Another blog post about blight prevention and resistant varieties of tomatoes.

http://awaytogarden.com/planning-now-for-a-healthy-tomato-harvest/

Camp, you do come up with some really good links!

martha wrote:Camp, you do come up with some really good links!

Thanks Martha, I try to keep it educational and relevant. Nice to see you!   

camprn wrote:Another blog post about blight prevention and resistant varieties of tomatoes.

http://awaytogarden.com/planning-now-for-a-healthy-tomato-harvest/

Camp - I followed this link and then it led me to another link that I thought was excellent.  Here is the link
http://awaytogarden.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/lbfaq-4.pdf

My tomatoes die from one disease or another every year.  Bacterial leaf spot, bacterial leaf speck, early blight, late blight.  The above link mentions using a copper spray as a preventative fungicide for late blight.  Does anyone use a fungicide as a preventative measure and if so what do you use???