Is this disease? Never had this before

[rainbowgardener]

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]

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]

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.

[TomatoGirl]

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]

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.

[TomatoGirl]

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.