TOMATOES AND BLIGHT

[Nature's Babe]

I never suggested not growing tomatoes, in fact I have planted about five varieties of tomatoes - and tomatillos - and if blight is a problem then I will still have the cape gooseberries and tomatillos. I expect a lot depends on what sort of summer we have.

[Johnboy]

Hi NB,
I have not said that you have made such a suggestion and in fact in the very first sentence of your original posting you make it quite clear. The trouble is that the thread was moving away from the intention of your original posting in the wrong direction giving a rather false impression.
Hence my intervention.
JB.

[Compo]

I wonder if anyone has thought about growing ferline and legend as a fall back crop if the others fail, they are both essentially large toms one being a beefsteak but great in salads and excellent for that glut the end of the growing year for making relish, they are not as blight resistant as the Sarpo spuds but they can shake off a small attack of blight and continue to thrive. The problem with spraying is that there are so many blight warnings if you subscribe to blight that spraying must surely be an endless expensive task?

CoMpO

[Nature's Babe]

Johnboy, I am growing tomatoes, in fact I am growing gardeners delight, gigante, green gold heritage,italian plum, eden red / gold variety and the tomatillos and cape gooseberries ! I am picking cape gooseberries already, tomatoes are only just forming .
Compo, I did grow ferline last year, but found the heritage green gold variety stood up to blight better than ferline. I don't know the name of the green/gold ones because I saved the seed from a tub of mixed Jersey heritage tomatoes, bought from our local supermarket.
I trust most people here have enough common sense to make up thier own minds, and had no intention of misleading anyone. only to share ideas.

Human beings have different levels of immunity and diet plays a role in health, not sure how one might do it, but it would be interesting to look at feed, and soil fertility, and see if that affects plant immunity to blight.I suspect stressed plants might succomb quicker

[Primrose]

I see that the weather forecast is suggesting we might have a rather wet summer which I fear bodes ill for blight. About a third of my tomato crop this consists of Ferline and I'm also growing "False Ferline", (i.e. from last year's saved Ferline seeds) as a experiment, to see how differently they perform.

Over the past two years I've found that when blight did strike, my Tumbling Red & Tumbling Yellow varieties didn't seem to suffer so badly. I didn't spray them like I did the upright varieties as an experiment and they continued to crop until the end of the season.

At what point will the sprayers amongst us start spraying? Last year I started around mid July but I suspect timing may depend largely on the weather conditions.

[Chantal]

Hi Primrose

If you register with Blightwatch http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/content/bw-Home.asp they will email/text you to warn of blight in your area. Then you can start spraying.

[WestHamRon]

Hi Primrose

If you register with Blightwatch http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/content/bw-Home.asp they will email/text you to warn of blight in your area. Then you can start spraying.

I haven't had any warnings yet, despite the last few days being very muggy. I see their chart only goes upto today's date. I seem to remember they had forecasts last year. I could be mistaken
Is anyone able to confirm ?

Edit.
Sitting waiting for me this afternoon. Potatoes now sprayed along with tomatoes closest to them. The rest of the toms will have to wait.
My packet of bordeaux Mixture suggests that while Potato Blight can begin about now, Tomato Blight is around the end of July.
I don't intend to leave it that late, but can the toms wait until the weekend?

[Nature's Babe]

An informative article on blight and copper fungicides. be aware, spray with care.

http://factoidz.com/gardening-tips-toma ... treatment/

[Chantal]

We've had our first blight alert, see viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8479

[Johnboy]

Hi NB,
Suspect that you should be sending a copy of your posted website concerning spays containing Copper to the Soil Association.
These Copper sprays are the only treatment against blight that they allow under their accreditation scheme.
I only wish you could have heard Peter Melchett's comments on the radio a few months back with regards to Copper Sprays.
JB.