well, today I spent another few hours trying to save my tomato's. We are finally starting to get some dry, although humid weather. Observations, the 'Big Beef' de-hybridized variety is particularly susceptible, of the 4 plants 3 are denuded of foliage. Survival of these is in question. Opalka, is surprisingly resilient, it has responded well to the pruning and appears to be fairly resistant to the blight. Big Belgium, is responding as well or better than Opalka to the pruning and rough handling. Suddath's strain of Brandywine is showing a bit of stress, but responds well to pruning. All diseased plant material has been bagged and disposed of in the trash, never to be composted. Should have been burned.
FBG, I do hope your plants recover. Have you tried giving them a boost of calcium? We are having dry but humid weather, and our tomatoes are finished for this season. I'll be cutting back the Perons, Amish paste, Romas, and Celebrities and keeping them watered in hopes of a fall harvest. Good luck with your tomatoes!
yep, up here, too. I fear this might be another year of the mutated blight that the fungicides won't touch unless you have access to the commercial products AND know what to combine to make an effective spray. Our tomatoes are looking beautiful as long as you don't look too closely. I see grey mold everywhere and we need to spray.
Carolyn, Try a betadine spray,,thats all I did to mine when mine had early blight two years ago. They did great and I had a normal harvest. Lost a few leaves but nothing major . I used about 2 tbsp per gallon of water to start then cut down to 1 tbsp per gallon . If you use an insecticide you can add it to the spray .
Thanks Mart. I'll try to pick some up in the next couple days to try it. We needed to spray tonight but we were just to tired. Hopefully Monday will be okay to get to it.
I do not think one day will make a difference ,, should be fine !! Its just an anti fungal /antiseptic . Same thing a surgeon uses to scrub with before surgery. A friend who worked in the surgical unit at out hospital used to bring it to me . Whatever is not used is trashed so no loss there. I use it for all kinds of scratches, rain rot on my horses/dogs as well as in the garden. I can`t be without betadine. And pretty cheap .
Mart, how long must we wait before eating veggies that have been sprayed with Betadine solution? Too bad I didn't read this before I took the pea vines out.
Hi all, I took Mart's suggestion & have been using the betadine solution. My tomatoes do have blight, but look much better than any of the other tomato plants in the community garden. I have 101 tomatoes ripening daily. I think my skin is turning red/orange.
As I said above betadine is just an antiseptic/antifungal,, the same thing the doctor scrubs with before surgery and the same thing they prep the surgical area on you with. Very safe as is but with only a couple of TBSP in a gallon of water,, if you spray in the morning you can eat the produce in the afternoon. You can also use it as a preventative to reduce the mold and mildew count in the garden . I had early blight about three years ago but its never returned. I didn`t do much except spray with the betadine solution and leave the plants alone. I had about 75 plants that year and 1/4 at least had the blight but all were sprayed so no spread and I only lost one plant. Not sure if the blight was the reason or a gopher got the roots.
