Blight - is it worth spraying?

[Chantal]

Every one of my 54 outdoor tomato plants succumbed to blight this week. Surprisingly only the main crop potatoes have suffered, the rest are OK.

I've been told I can spray the tomatoes even though it's already damaged them (I've binned over a dozen). Is this right? Is this safe? Should I scrap the lot and rely on the greenhouse tomatoes?

I've bought some Bordeaux Mix but I don't like using chemicals unless absolutely essential and I'm not sure I feel comfortable about eating tomatoes that have been sprayed. It says to repeat spray every 3 weeks which means I can't clear the fruit, spray and then eat the new clean fruit.

Ideas anyone?

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Chantal, i'm going to pull all mine up tomorrow evening.
I'm sure once plants have succumbed to the dreaded blight, spraying is inaffective.

Lucky for me, i sowed a lot of seed late so i will grow them on in the greenhouse now.

This gardening game can be so trying, at least we can have a good laugh between the problems.

[Chantal]

Thanks OH, you're telling me what I already know, just didn't want to believe.

I still have a greenhouse full of blight free tomatoes, but they're not doing nearly as well as the outdoor ones.

Swings and roundabouts though, this year I have brilliant courgettes, cabbages and kale; last year they were useless.

[jane E]

I'm going to have the same problem this week, because my potatoes are just over the path from my tomatoes and they have blight. I'm glad I planted some blight free potatoes. I haven't done greenhouse tomatoes, unfortunately this year - first year I haven't.

[Colin_M]

Every one of my 54 outdoor tomato plants succumbed to blight this week.

Hi Chantal, sorry to hear about this. Like you, all my outdoor toms are blighted and so are most people's toms (and spuds) on our allotment.

Just one question What do you normally do with the results from 54 tomato plants?!!!! Must be quite spectacular.

Colin

[Chantal]

Hi Colin

I make a lot of passata which I freeze and having bought a dehydrator I had planned to make a load of "sun dried" tomatoes this year. I sell a fair few to the guys at work and also eat them by the bushel.

[Compo]

We have blight on the plot and I plant four varieties of tatoes only one of which appears to have been affected, it seems to affect the crops that are well advanced: i.e. first / second earlies. So I have dug em up and hope for the best with the main and late crops. Folk are spraying / copper / bordeaux / dithane and all sorts on wilting crops. Quite honestly they can go and buy healthy non organic spuds from local farm shops for what they are spending on chemicals, but it is a matter of personal choice I guess and trying to desperately salvage what you have toiled over.

Compo

[Chantal]

Yesterday I pulled the badly affected tomatoes out and binned them. Today the remainder, which looked half decent yesterday, are almost all blackened today. Nothing I could spray on them could save them now.

Ah well, there's always next year.

[Jenny Green]

Be sure to grow some Ferline next year Chantal.

[Johnboy]

Hi Chantal,
For the first time ever I have succumbed to blight on my outdoor Tomatoes. Such a shame because they were really looking very promising crop-wise only last week. I trashed the lot yesterday.
JB.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Johnboy, sorry to hear about your tomatoes as well, it can be quite trying at times.

[Chantal]

Hi Jenny, yes Ferline sound good for next year, but another thread is indicating there's something wrong with them this year too!

JB and everyone else in the same boat, sorry about your crop, I know just how you feel.

[Primrose]

A couple of years ago I thought my outdoor tomatoes were surcombing to blight and sprayed them just as the early fruit were starting to ripen hoping I would preventing it from spreading. Then we went away for a week-end and returned to find every single plant dead and the fruit starting to rot, so I lost the lot. . I couldn't believe how quickly it happened. I don't have a greenhouse and am now watching my outdoor tomatoes VERY anxiously, having read your various reports. I don't know whether permanently covering all the plants with fleece would prevent the disease and air borne fungus from spreading. It's often not very practical and I wonder whether the amount of sunlight it would shut out would prevent the plants from development properly, although I know it's often used for protecting cabbages, etc. Has anybody ever tried it?

[Chantal]

Bob Flowerdew has a sort of poly shelter rigged up over his (so I read some time ago). It doesn't stop rain reaching the roots, but it does stop the rain falling on the plants. It was a fairly open structure as I recall but he claims it works. If I remember rightly it was plastic and canes, nothing very hard to build.

I doubt fleece would help but an umbrella might just do the job.

[FatB]

Just to add to the general concensus, we've just cut the tops off our second earlies Vanessa, and salads Charlotte, and the lots gone on the bonfire, but early maincrop Desiree and the late maincrop Cara seem OK tonight, but obviously we'll be watching like hawks from now on. Polytunnel tomatoes OK so far. Am I right that I can leave the spuds in the ground and they'll still be OK? Or is that too much to hope for! FatB.