Hey, while out watering my gardens today I noticed these dark dots on my leaves of the tomato plants and some on a few of my cantaloupe leaves. I removed them promptly but I am afraid they will come back. Any ideas how I can save my tomato plants and prevent this from spreading in the garden. Look below for photo of some of the leaves I removed. What does this come from?. Thank you in advance. P.s. would like to go the cheap/natural rout of treatment if necessary. P.s. these are my tomatos that took a beating with the hail storm, not sure if this increased the likelihood of what ever this is to happen. But I thought I would include this bit of info.
Looks like tomato blight to me. Were these leaves near the ground? I think there are several fungi that affect tomato plants. The (non-chemical) ways I deal with this is: 1) remove affected leaves quickly, disposing of them in your garbage not compost pile, wash hands afterwards 2) provide good air circulation around each plant by staking & not planting too closely 3) try to avoid overhead watering---water the soil instead, 4) use a black plastic mulch or ground cover to prevent rain splashing up from the soil to the leaves & carrying the fungi up & 5) rotate crops---plant tomatoes (& their cousins potatoes) in a different section of the garden every year. At the end of the season, dispose of your tomato & potato plants. Hope this helps. If your tomato plant is covered with this disease, I would just get rid of it, but maybe others in The Stew will have different advice.
You also NEED to spray a fungicide of some kind. Mart gave me the "recipe" for the betadine solution to spray... which isn't organic I am sure, but it works. I always have it in the medicine cupboard ( which I didn't actually know until I went looking for "betadine" at the drug store. That is actually a name brand. I buy providine/iodine solution at the dollar store). I always keep it around for scrapes and for athletes foot as it is antifungal. 2 T to 1 gallon of water and spray the whole plant and use a pump up sprayer. It is much easier. I sprayed mine on Sunday night and they sure don't look any worse. The blight or any fungal infection won't go away. It just keeps getting worse.
Carolyn, Betadyn? That is straight out of my childhood! Thanks. I have noticed there are some tomato plants at my community garden that are very badly affected with this, meaning at least 1/2 the plant is shriveled. My tomatoes are doing remarkably well. ??? I don't know how contagious this fungus is. I am worried the gardeners will just dump their tomato plants in the community compost heap at the end of the season.
"I have noticed there are some tomato plants at my community garden that are very badly affected with this, meaning at least 1/2 the plant is shriveled. My tomatoes are doing remarkably well. ??? I don't know how contagious this fungus is. I am worried the gardeners will just dump their tomato plants in the community compost heap at the end of the season." Yep, they all need to be cleaned up and sprayed to even hopefully get a few nice ripe tomatoes. Unfortunately the extremely wet June was detrimental to even a hope of getting away without spraying something in order to get a crop. Maybe a sign in the entrance and again at the compost to "dispose of all tomato plants into trash bags and to NOT compost them", due to the blight being on the plants and the possibility of the soil carrying the live spores into next years garden if the compost is spread on the plot and the cycle is repeated... over and over.
I have been removing the bad leaves that were affected from black spot while searching to find a spray I was comfortable using to control the fungus. My one tomato plant is so sparse now that if it gets hit one more time, I fear I will have to pull it out. It seems to be spreading to the other tomato very slowly. I finally got a spray in the mail and will be spraying the tomato plants tonight. I have seriously had the worst luck this year. Between the bad hail storm that almost destroyed my garden, to all the mini windy ones and now this fungus. Seriously frustrating. Also, while removing the bad leaves, I noticed that most of all the grass and weeds surrounding the gardens have this black spot fungus. I was reading a little more about removing the tomato after so it doesn't happen again but if my whole yard is effected, what do you guys suggest I do?.
