just how destructive is late blight?

[tjg911]

due to my inattention i had LB on 8/20 but it wasn't until 8/24 i saw and realized this is LB. i know what the damage to the leaves and stems looks like and the gray fuzzy spores under the leaves so i am really sure it is LB.

on 8/23 i sprayed all 8 plants with fish milk and on 8/26 i sprayed again but just milk and water no fish fertilizer. no spraying since.

all my plants are still alive tho most lost 75-90% of the foliage, aunt gertie's gold still has good amount of foliage, and some plants have new flowers. about 8/29 many fruits were light green so i picked 30-40 figuring the plants would be dead in a few days and maybe some of them would ripen. all ripened fine as far as color but most are inedible, they are sour or hard or mealy or some combination. i have made 3 batches of pretty good sauce so far and have dozens more tomatoes so i'll probably get a lot of sauce.

about 9/4 i picked more fruits some were coloring up on the vine. i removed all fruits that have LB rot on them and they went into the trash can.

today all 8 plants are still alive, as i stated some have new flowers and many of the fruits do not have any LB lesions and are ripening.

here's an ironic twist, in 2009 the year of massive LB, prue was the last plant to die, it was labor day about 6 weeks after infection and fish milk spraying. this year prue lost the most foliage the earliest from LB while other plants did not look that bad. but here's the odd thing, all the prue tomatoes i picked, free of any LB, have all ripened and so far every one was good to eat vs all the others that were not! the taste is not 100% but darn good vs the 7 other varieties you wouldn't want to eat.

so the point of all this is "is LB fatal 100% of the time and if so in what time frame?". how can i have all 8 plants still alive 2 1/2 weeks after LB struck? i used a milk spray twice and never used daconil. it's rained a few times so the plants have been wet over night but since 8/20 it has been warm (70's some 80's), sunny and low humidity.

tom