This is utterly disgusting and sad

[Alberta]

Its almost the middle of August, and I've got 3 full size tomatoes trying to ripen on my dining room table and thats it for the whole season due to LB. The cherries have been ripening in drips and drabs, and I'll be pulling and bagging up more plants today. I'm truly not a happy camper!!

Alberta

[Blueaussi]

Man, it really bites to lose a whole season to disease. Happened to me twice with Tomato Spotted Wilt, so I feel your pain.

[barkeater]

I'm fearful too. I've picked only a half dozen Bloody Butchers so far and I have 20 plants at risk. A couple days ago a friend of mine lost all his to LB. He went to Boston over the weekend leaving healthy plants and came back to dead ones. He's about 20 miles from me.

They don't spray and I hope my spraying will keep it at bay. But we had a gully washer of a T-storm yesterday, so I guess I better spray again.

[carolyn137]

I've said it several times here but I'll really be surprised if I get any tomatoes this year. Plants went out in late June due to two frosts, so three weeks behind to start with and I don't have to tell you how cool and rainy July was, etc.

I've had Freda spraying and my fingers are crossed that we get a very late first Fall frost. All I've seen to date is a couple of plants with Septoria.

But I'm starting to wonder if everyone who says they have LB really does. And I ask that b'c in the past several days two folks have called me, local folks, and I've asked them to bring me affected leaves and look for any black areas on the stems, etc., and in both cases the infections were a combo of Early Blight and Septoria Leaf Spot.

And their plants went down quite quickly, but given the local conditions I can see the foliage bad guys doing that.

And in both cases they had already pulled up their plants.

With both I talked about preventative sprays, showed them some good pictures in one of my tomato pathology books and I hope that helped.

That's not to say there's no LB around here, there is. There are two large potato farms and agents, I don't know if from the COunty or the State have been seen at both places in the past few days and dead plants can be seen from the road. And I know from the County reports that many around here have lost tomato plants to LB.

For many, especially those whose only income is from their crops, it has been described as truly an agricultural disaster.

[barkeater]

Carolyn, what I've been telling my gardening friends is if there are numerous small dark spots on a yellowing leaf (Septoria) or larger spots surrounded by yellow (EB) then they are probably OK.

If there is no yellow on the leaf associated with the dark spot they should be concerned.

[Dukerdawg]

Been a bad year here too. At first it looked promising....but cool temps and no rain delayed things. I have had ripe 'maters but nothing like I should from 85 plants. The only positive is no canning to do and being the lazy guy I am recently that is no biggie. Still have enough for some sandwiches and salads. Not great, but appreciate whatever blessings occur.

Duane

[where_with_all]

I can feel all of your pain. here in long island the wet june and july have done a number on my plants. I am holding out hope but it really doesn't look good

[organichris]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

I've said it several times here but I'll really be surprised if I get any tomatoes this year. Plants went out in late June due to two frosts, so three weeks behind to start with and I don't have to tell you how cool and rainy July was, etc...

That's global warming for ya.

[hasshoes]

And don't forget botrytis. Conditions are perfect for it in NE. It speads from flowers too, which is something to be on the lookout for.

Like LB it can spread really fast on the wind and through a plant. Like LB it sporulates and can turn leaves black FAST. Since it's been wet leaves may appear water soaked as well, particularly on the bottoms of plants or in the middle.

If people are unsure of their infection they should look at botrytis on google images.

[Alberta]

Coming back to my own post here, yes its LB for me even the tomatoes are turning black both on the vine and on the dining room table. I've been reading alot about it all over the internet, and have compared the pictures I've seen to my own plants, and its just horrible. We had alot of rain again last night, so I'm headed out there to see what might survive and what probably won't. One good thing is I've got quite a bit of compost that is offically done, so I just might pull all the tomatoes, bag them and lay down some compost and hope next year is better.

[hasshoes]

Sorry to get off topic Alberta. I feel your pain. :0)

I lost 30 plants in one fell swoop. All were raised organically from seed with lots of love and soil amendments. Actinovate, Serenade, Myco-Grow, Organic TomatoTone, molasses, Neptune Harvest, Neem, Bat Guano, tiller rental,. . . the list goes on.

I was even trying different techniques on different plants, but they went down to a stinky black mass all the same.

A handful were rare seeds you can't buy that I don't have duplicates of, and another handful were new varieties that I was growing for people's growout projects.

I feel bad that I can't report back to people on the tomatoes they're creating/stabilizing. . . but I did all I could do.

Next year I'm going to try to rent a patch of land where I can spray stronger stuff.
I used to eat mostly all organic but not anymore. . . it's just too expensive. I figure if my pizza and salsa aren't organic then why should my tomatoes be?

And gawd. . . I don't even want to think about my "carbon footprint" for all the stuff I ordered online to be shipped here. . . all that energy for shipping and creating the products. . .

Lol, I probably have my own hole in the ozone at this point. ;0)

[Wi-sunflower]

I don't even want to think about my "carbon footprint" for all the stuff I ordered online to be shipped here.

Actually you probably used less fuel that if you tried to find all the stuff locally. Don't forget when they are shipping things to you, there is also stuff going to hundreds of others in that same truck. "Car Pooling" for buying stuff.

Last week I went to 4 stores here to get some tools I've always gotten here. Used several gallons of fuel and ended up getting nothing. Found what I wanted on the web and had them in 3 days for less shipping cost than what I spent on the gas.

Carol

[hasshoes]

Well that's good to know!


I always feel a tinge of guilt because I get all my clothes online and often ship back things that don't fit. Even though I've always lived near shopping areas . . . I hate driving or walking around all day to maybe only come home with one thing. I think I lack the shopping gene.

[mayax68]

My father in-law lost his whole tomato garden in about 1 week. We live in the same town. I examined my plants and found the same symptoms showing. Several of my fruit developed the rot and there were some lesions and a lot of the black spots on the stems. I decided that instead of pulling all the plants I will try to delay the problem and give the plants a chance to ripen the fruit by cutting off any branches that did not have fruit, top off the plants right above the highest level of the fruit and remove ALL the LEAVES from what is left. My tomato garden looks horrible, but it has been a week and I do not see any more new fruit succumbing to the disease. I never tried this before, nor did I read about this particular way of handling LB anywhere - just trying out whatever I can to save my tomato fruit.

[rsg2001]

So far I haven't had LB, but an awful lot of Early Blight... And the mystery disease that I get every year on Black Cherry has once again struck. The leaves just dry crisp (brown) and work their way from the bottom of the plant to the top. No spores that I can see. The same condition hit my Black plant (different container). It doesn't affect the fruit, so I just keep removing the branches with the crispy leaves. Black has about 10 tomatoes on it, and Black Cherry has a lot of unripe fruit. I'm happy that a few weeks ago I rooted a black cherry and have another young plant now that's fruiting, which hopefully will give fruit through the autumn.