i'm in shock, i found late blight

[tjg911]

so why am i in shock? read on.

my 10 plants have been inspected every day for at least 4 weeks and no sign of LB. 2 weeks ago i started to spray the plants with a milk solution as a preventative. milk has the ability to feed the micro herd that live on the plant leaves to strengthen the plants and hopefully attack or reduce LB spores. so friday (7/24) i sprayed for the 2nd time. it rained hard at night so i wanted to have the milk on the leaves for over 24 hours so i sprayed again on saturday, the following day.

at 11 am saturday my reif's red heart was healthy. it is the tallest plant, well over 6', and has the most foiliage. it is loaded with tomatoes, not just 8 or 12 i'd say 20-25, some big.

24 hours later to the hour, my reif's red heart has a lot of LB signs on many leaves and leisons on the stalk. the final proof is that some of the leaves that have the dark spots have the white fungus growing on the underside of the leaf. in exactly 24 hours this plant went from not having any sign of LB to being very obviously infected!

it killed me to see this. i carefully cut the plant into small pieces so as to not touch adjacent plants or drop any leaves and placed them in the trash. i removed all the straw at the base of the plant and it too went into the trash.

i do not and will not spray chemicals so now i ask "with 11 plants, planted in 2 rows 4' on center, if the RRH got LB is it possible that no other plants will? that seems impossible. if spores drifted via the air to the RRH isn't it safe to assume that all the plants were infected with the spores? so isn't it likely every plant will be infected in a day or 2 and i will get not tomatoes from these plants as i'm removing them in the hopes of saving the other plants.

here's the planting again 4' on center the red x is was the RRH, 1 cage has 2 plants in it:

x x x
..x x
..x x
..x x


i have picked a few sun golds and 4 other tomatoes that need to ripen inside. i can't believe this may be the sum total for an entire year's tomatoes! i grew 5 new hearts this year to see how they taste. i am so depressed i can't explain the anxiety i am experiencing right now. what use is summer if i can't have tomatoes?

tom

[bcday]

I'm sorry to hear that this happened. I do think that the rest of your tomato plants are at risk. LB is a very contagious disease.

If you don't want to use chlorothalonil, you are pretty much setting yourself up for a very short tomato season. You might need to stick to very early varieties that can mature a crop before LB strikes.

Three miles from here there is a community garden with about 110 individual plots. Almost every plot has tomato plants and all of them are heavily infected with LB. I think most of the gardeners there don't spray anything at all. A couple of folks used Serenade or Concern (a commercial copper soap solution). Others have been using various homebrew potions involving aspirin, cornmeal, milk, baking soda, and other pantry supplies to try to ward off LB. Unfortunately their experience has been the same as yours -- all of their tomato plants are just as badly infected as the ones that weren't treated with anything.

[hasshoes]

Aww sheesh. . . sorry to hear this is happening to you.

What a crap year! :0P Good luck. . .

[cottonpicker]

Hello.fellow gardeners,

I am on the gardening committee for about 90 fellow gardeners @ Shannondell at Valley Forge, PA and I have begun to identify a few instances of Late Blight. So far, it is being held "in check" by removing & destroying badly diseased plants or by pruning leaves of MODERATELY affected plants. We're hoping to subdue the disease before it becomes "systemic" and shows symptoms of blackening of major stems & fruits.
So far.....so good.

[tjg911]

i hope that works but this plant had way too much LB to try to remove it.

exactly 24 hours later at 11 am this morning after another night of rain as ususal, i went out to the garden. i was pleasantly surprised to see no other plants show LB. now after 1 plant surfaced i figured at least a couple more would, i can't imagine spores would land on 1 plant and not the others. i was really relived to see this but realistically i expect more trouble.

all the tomatoes on that RRH plant! this is sickening.

tom

[Barbee]

Bummer Tom
Crossing my fingers that you are safe from any more problems.

[Frog]

I know your pain, I lost my entire crop to LB in 2007. The speed with which it destroyed the crop was ferocious. In 2008 most gardeners in the UK lost their crop again, some how I escaped the worst of it, my plants only succumbing late in the season and having provided a good crop.

This year we are again seeing devastating LB in the UK, the summer has been wet and cool, despite promises of a hot dry one from the meteorologists.

My fingers are crossed for your crop and for mine and everyone elses.

I like you, will not be spraying my crop, I do not want to load my soil with copper residues.

For future reference, growers in the UK, with its crippling blight problems, have found growing their plants under a roof, open sided, has delivered considerable protection against fungal foliar diseases including LB.

[HakaiRah]

l_lateblightplantview.JPG
I showed off my tomatoes on Sunday to a friend and they were all looking generally healthy with maybe a spot here or there that I normally wouldn't sweat. I came home tonight to find the bottom three feet of leaves dead or dying.
l_lateblightleafdamage_closeup.jpg
Up close of late blight.
l_lateblightcanker.JPG
Late blight canker on a stem
l_lateblightleafdamage_2.JPG
More leaf damage
l_lateblightleafdamage_3.jpg
And yet more leaf damage.

At the pace the disease is moving my plants will be done by Friday, so in the interest of stopping the spread to my neighbors if possible I'm going to yank all 24 of my tomato plants and all 16 of my potato plants which are also suffering from it. In one fell swoop over a 3rd of my garden is gone. Sadly, no tomatoes yet so it is a total write off.

[hasshoes]

Oh no HakaiRah--- that is such a bummer! So sorry to hear that. Gardening can be so painful!!

It is very nice of you to pull your plants for your neighbors though.

I'm surprised that you got hit because I was just reading that Mass. was getting off easy on the Late Blight front.

Did you spray with anything? I've been using Serenade and Actinovate (organic) occasionally . . . but with our sudden muggy heat I'm starting to get nervous. . .

Thanks for the head up. . . and thanks for all the detailed pics. . . I hate how a lot of the online diagnosis pics are low resolution so you can't see much.

[HakaiRah]

I don't use any chemical controls in my garden, or at least I've avoided it so far. Next year if they send out another Late Blight warning I believe I would relent with that restriction after seeing the devastation wrought this year Good luck, it sounds like you'll be good with your protection regimen.

[hasshoes]

Looks like it is spreading all across Mass.

http://www.umassvegetable.org/LateBl...andPotato.html

I blame New Yorkers ;0).

Seriously though, it's in the country right next door, so I think I need to start being more vigilant.

Hopefully though our strong coastal winds (that I keep complaining about :0) will finally come in handy. (I'm in Plymouth County.)

[HakaiRah]

Two small rays of hope shone through this evening as I was finishing the removal of my blighted plants. I realized that two of the plants were still largely unscathed by the late blight. With their neighbors dead and withered branches draping over their healthy branches. It turns out that the Cosmonaut Volkov Red plants are resistant to late blight, and that's proving true for me. I decided to try them this year since I liked the name, and now I'm happy I did as I have two plants left standing out of the twenty-four, which is far better than none

[tjg911]

i found 1 tomato plant sunday with LB, i removed it immediately. on monday and tuesday nothing. wednesday i skipped checking but today i found 6 new tomato plants infected. it appears i will lose all 11 plants at this rate. i decided to not remove the infected plants that show minor infection hoping some tomatoes will start to ripen and i can pick them, so many are just at the stage where they have started to get lighter green now. i have picked about 10 tomatoes and about a dozen cherry tomatoes, not exactly the summer i expected.

i am not sure what to do next year. i have always gardened organically never putting anything in the garden or on the plants that was not organic. if this means no tomatoes next year, and it's not going to be know until next year, then i may have to make a decision as to using fungicides, something I do not want to do. if i can't have tomatoes then there seems to be less of a purpose to have a garden, probably no purpose. i could buy all the various things i grow and save myself a lot of work. this is the most depressing gardening season ever, i never failed to have tomatoes thru august and september, i have never seen late blight.

tom

[HakaiRah]

Be aware the late blight will infect your tomatoes as well as the leaves. I totally understand the temptation to leave them up on the hope you'll get some. At the same time I know that between Sunday and Wednesday a majority of my tomato fruits were showing signs of late blight. If your fruits are still clear you may want to cut them off and window ripen when taking down the rest of the plant. Otherwise you may find them ruined along with the rest of the plant.

It took me until last night just to take down and bag all my toms, since I only have around an hour of daylight each night after work.

[Barbee]

I'm sorry you both are going through this
How awful to see your hard work be wiped out in such a short time. Really a shame.