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TomatoGirl
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Is this disease? Never had this before

What is this?
This plant was totally healthy yesterday. The whole thing has these spots. I have twenty tomatoes and this is the only one affected. There is a branch from the neighbouring plant trailed up in there, and that too is affected but not the plant itself.
They were all fertilized yesterday. Same brand and dose. Weather yesterday was warm and dry like today.
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thanrose
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That may be fertilizer burn. How did you apply? Anytime fertilizer gets on the leaves of plants you risk a burn. Add sun and the chances increase. The fact that you applied yesterday and the damage looks so new makes me think that's what it was. Not many things would cause this marking of the leaves. It will recover.

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TomatoGirl
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Mixed in a watering can poured at the roots. I never wet my foliage even with plain water.

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rainbowgardener
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I'm afraid you have late blight. The stem discolorations visible at bottom front are pretty diagnostic:

Image

It's a very serious and quick spreading disease. Since you have so many other plants, I would pull this one (bag and trash, NOT compost) and the affected part of the one touching it.

Then treat everything else with an anti-fungal, like compost tea, diluted milk, baking soda solution, etc. being sure to spray undersides of leaves as well.

Sorry to be bearer of bad tidings. Best Wishes.

thanrose
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Good catch RBG! I couldn't really see the pic all that well. It was a knee jerk response to the mention of fertilizer. Tomato Girl, I'm gonna defer to RBG for sure on this one.

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TomatoGirl
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Gosh darn it!!!
Ok. Wow that turned up fast. How does it happen?
Is there a recipie for the milk spray?
Thank you. I'll get rid of it in the morning.

imafan26
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Yeah, late blight is what it looks like to me too. It is usually a problem in cool wet weather. Unfortunately phythoptora can hang around in the soil for a long time. You could try to solarize, but I would not plant tomatoes or relatives in the same spot. Destroy infested plants to limit the spread of the spores.

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rainbowgardener
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Just dilute milk with water (I've seen anywhere from 5parts water to one part milk up to 10 parts water). Let it sit at room temperature for a couple hours to culture the lactobacillus a bit, then spray.

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TomatoGirl
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This is awful :(
I see at least 2 more that were next to it affected. I'm going to pull those too. Is any unaffected fruit salvageable? One of them is my beautiful brandywine :(
I think I'm going to try the baking soda.
We've got rain coming in too. It's been a real wet summer. Probably what's caused this.
Fortunately all my toms are in pots, but what should I do with the soil? Will it affect any other plants or just tomatoes?

Thank you.

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TomatoGirl
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So just lost half of my crop. I'm devastated.
Recently had a baby so I've not been as attentive as normal so it's spread like crazy.
Any where the stem hasn't been affected just the leaves, I'll remove the leaves and spray the plants and hope for the best.
I could cry right now.

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applestar
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Oh... I'm SO SORRY to hear this. My garden was hit by late blight several years ago and once you start to realize and look, many more than initial discovery are often affected.

I did try to see if blushed and green fruits would ripen in the house. Some developed the black lesions but some did make it. I used a large flat box lined with paper and kept the fruits from touching each other, and any time an affected fruit appeared, I changed the paper and reorganized so the closest fruits went into separate "quarantine" box.

Solanacea are affected. Particularly potatoes are vulnerable... and I suspect eggplants also. Pepper's seemed less susceptible. Also related fruits/plants like cape gooseberry, ground cherry, tomatillo, Chinese lantern. Keep an eye out for seeds that might become carriers like belladonna, datura/jimsonweed, etc.

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rainbowgardener
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Yeah, we've had a rainy summer. I fortunately haven't had any blights, but my tomato plants are pretty ravaged by septoria. It is a different fungal disease, but one that they can live with a lot longer and spreads slower. None the less production is way down, because the plants have so few leaves left as I keep removing affected ones.

imafan26
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If the soil is in pots, then I would bag it. Bleach the pots before you use it again. Fruits will show the black spots. Phythoptora is a soil borne disease and will infect and come up the root system, so topical sprays are not likely to help it. It isn't really a fungus but a oomycete or a type of water mold. It needs wet conditions to thrive. Some species of phythoptora can remain in the soil for years, so unless you can sterilize the soil in a soil sterilizer, I would not keep it. It would probably be ok for fill where you are not planning to plant anything. Be careful to put the pot on a plastic sheet when you take it apart. You don't want to contaminate anything else. Decontaminate tools boots, wash your hands and use disposable gloves. Do not save seeds. The disease can be carried by the seeds.

The best prevention is sanitation and preventive fungicides. Some light infestations can be treated by removing leaves, but I found that as long as the conditions that allowed the fungus to grow persists, it is almost impossible to stop. If you try to save a failing plant rather than pulling it out, you just increase the risk to spreading the disease spores to other plants.

Phythoptora that affects tomatoes and potatoes are not as bad as other species, but just as devastating.
https://aciar.gov.au/files/node/598/mn114-part3.pdf
https://www.tomatodirt.com/tomato-blight-late.html

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applestar
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An idea and question for folks who have experience solarlizing -- Since this is container soil/potting mix, do you suppose double-bagging in clear trash bags, flattening as much as possible and leaving in full sun like a driveway might be enough to *SOLARLIZE* ?

Personally, after treatment period, I would also mix in some kind of bio-active Soil conditioner -- fresh and active compost at the very least, AACT (actively aerated compost) would be my go-to Choice, but commercially available Espoma Bio-tone or similar product from Dr. Earth might be another possibility, or single-organism conditioners like Actinovate or others (I have to look it up but I have another one in mind as well).

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TomatoGirl
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Ended up losing them ALL. Months of work. Awful.
Worst disease I’ve ever dealt with. The weather had been so wet and nearly everyone I know had awful growing year and or blight.

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rainbowgardener
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So sad....

Being in Canada, perhaps your season was coolish and wet? Hot sunshine is a good preventative of fungal (and related, thanks imafan! ) diseases. The people who live in US south west never have these diseases (but then they have to pour precious water on theirs, instead of having it fall out of the sky).

Now that you have had blight in your garden, you will need to start treating preventatively right away this year, because spores are likely to still be around.

imafan26
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Phytophthora is hard to kill and can live in the soil for up to 20 years. If it is potting soil, the only way I know would be to cook it in the oven or a soil sterilizer. I would not recommend the oven, I did that once and it stunk. The steam sterilizer can't be too wet and it needs to cool completely or it will still be damp and the fungus will thrive in it again. Where I have phytophthora in the garden, I can only plant annual shallow rooted plants. There are very few plants that are tolerant of the soil condition. I have dug out the soil I don't usually reuse my potting soil especially if there were problems. I have access to a soil sterilizer at the garden where I volunteer and I usually bag my old potting soil and take it there to be steam sterilized. I usually don't take soil that had phytophthora there, I would only use it for filling low spots in the yard. I use the steam sterilizer mostly because I have a lot of weeds in the soil mix and if I don't sterilize it first, I have a lot of persistent weeds sprouting and competing with the plants in the pot unless I use a plastic or newspaper mulch. Even then the weeds will come up where the stem of the plants are and those are much harder to pull.



https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/veg ... te-blight/

pepperhead212
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I had a year like that, many years ago, when I only got a few cherry tomatoes early on, but eventually all were wiped out by almost constant rain. All that really survived were the greens (because of almost constant overcast, lettuce lived the entire summer, which never happens here) and peppers, though almost all of the peppers were split, which I had never seen before (or since). Fortunately, the next season was back to normal, and there didn't seem to be any lingering problems in the soil. Hopefully, this will be a one time thing for you, too.

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TomatoGirl
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rainbowgardener wrote:So sad....

Being in Canada, perhaps your season was coolish and wet? Hot sunshine is a good preventative of fungal (and related, thanks imafan! ) diseases. The people who live in US south west never have these diseases (but then they have to pour precious water on theirs, instead of having it fall out of the sky).

Now that you have had blight in your garden, you will need to start treating preventatively right away this year, because spores are likely to still be around.
Yes. It was VERY wet. Most people I know had a very bad growing season. Bugs and blight was a huge problem.
How do I do preventative measures this year? What should I be using?
Thank you.
I’m only growing 10-12 plants this year and will be spacing them out. They were overcrowded last year and so it spread like wild fire.

pepperhead212
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Maybe try some in containers? I have had much better success with container plants in wet years since that bad one - the water drains fast, and they dry out quickly, unless watered frequently, and then there's the SIPs, which I am planting ALL of my tomatoes in this season. Those got so huge and productive last season that I definitely have to space them farther apart this year.

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TomatoGirl
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I grow all my tomatoes in containers anyway. It was just a super wet year, and not having had blight before didn’t know what to look for until I’d already lost a plant and the rest were infected. Plus I’d just had a baby so they weren’t getting the attention I normally give them.



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