GardenerGirl
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Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:04 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Early Blight - Try to fix, or start over?

I was over at my mother's house yesterday for dinner, and went out to take a look at her garden, where I found her tomatoes suffering from a really severe case of early blight. One of them had something like 70-80% of the leaves affected, though I didn't see any stem damage. The other had around 50% of the plant affected.

I advised her to get rid of the damaged leaves ASAP, mulch around them, and start with a milk spray, but the weather has been so wet and miserable here for the last few weeks. They're predicting rain every day for another week or so, with no sun on the immediate horizon.

What are the chances that her tomatoes will recover from this to bear fruit this year? They are around 2.5 feet: one is a sweet 100 cherry tom and the other is some kind of beefsteak, though I don't know the exact variety. Should she stick with what she has now or cut her losses and plant new, quick-maturing seedlings to start over?

Any advice? I've always caught blight early enough in my tomatoes to bring them back, but I don't know when they've gone too far.

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applestar
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I wouldn't recommend starting from seed now but around here, the stores still have tomato plants, usually in big 1 gal pots, and on sale. So I would get replacement plants that way. You could plan on extending the season -- In the fall, surrounding the planting area with plastic sheeting stapled to stakes for wind barrier is one idea. If you can build up even more, then you could put up a temporary greenhouse with pvc pipe arches covered with either plastic or floating covers to protect entire plants from frost.

Also, I have several miserable looking tomato plants -- they got waterlogged while in transplant stage in pots, etc. and never leafed out properly -- some in larger pots, others planted -- as well as one that is gamely trying to grow in a low, wet area full of clay soil. They all have 1 cluster of tomatoes. I really don't expect them to produce any more than that.

GardenerGirl
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Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:04 pm
Location: Massachusetts, USA

I'll advise her to replace them, then, I think. She started from seedlings in the first place, and while the nice-looking tomato plants for sale now tend to be in the $10-15 range rather than the $1.99 for 6 they were in May, I think it would be worth the money for her to replace them rather than write off tomatoes altogether for the season.

She's a pretty low-key vegetable gardener, so probably won't go for anything fancy to extend the plant lives. She just has one little bed with her two tomato plants and some herbs. She likes enough cherry tomatoes for salads and one nice slicer for sandwiches and so forth. Her gardens are mostly ornamental, so I suspect adding plastic sheeting would not go over well with her. ;)



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