Tomato blight

I have just had to destroy 6 tomato plants that have blight, they went soggy then brown ... Yuck. I tried copper sulphate without success, I grew them in Dutch buckets in a hydroponic outdoor watering system. Only the big tomatoes were hit.. Not the cherry tomatoes. In all my years of growing I have never had this... How can I prevent it happening again please.. I am really down about this as it was a bumper crop. Giselle Australia Canberra ps they were heritage seeds.

I have just read the posts on late tomato blight.... I had forgotten that potatos are in the same family, so I will have a check on them tomorrow.. I am gutted, my entire summer canning crop has gone. ... Thanks for the info though. Giselle

Sorry, can't help you with the problem. Only great to see another Aussie here, cool climate too.
I never had this problem, I find that tomato like comfrey mulch. If the plant is healthy they usually don't get diseases.
But you do grow hydroponic, that's different.

I chose hydroponics as I had ran out of garden space and tomatos take a lot of water .. I am very disappointed with the result. Thanks for the comfrey tips I will try it in beds when I return to Tasmania. Giselle

Giselle Burningham wrote: How can I prevent it happening again please..

You can't leave an opening for the blight to exploit. The best way to do that is to load up the tomatoes with so much beneficial bacteria and fungi that any blight spores that wander in are going to be trampled like a rabbit in a cattle stampede. Compost tea applied liberally to the leaves of the tomato is the best way to do this. And maybe a root drench as well. Do it in the cool of the morning so that the bacteria and fungi that are in the compost tea can get settled in before the heat of the day arrives. Keep a continual bucket of compost tea brewing, and the day after each thunderstorm, get out there and make sure to put back what Mother Nature has washed away.

I used to have problems with Fusarium, but since I began sprinkling compost tea over anything and everything, the Fusarium problem has mostly gone away.

Giselle Burningham wrote:I chose hydroponics as I had ran out of garden space and tomatos take a lot of water .. I am very disappointed with the result. Thanks for the comfrey tips I will try it in beds when I return to Tasmania. Giselle

You have not had this problem until you went to hydroponics.
You went to hydroponics because you had no space in the garden.
It says you are on 73 acres and you get your whole crop off 6 plants.

I would recommend planting more tomatoes and use different approaches.
I am trying to keep my tomatoes spread throughout the garden. Cages enable
me to grow them vertically and they can be grown in a fairly compact space right
among the other vegetables.

John Elliott wrote:

Giselle Burningham wrote: How can I prevent it happening again please..

You can't leave an opening for the blight to exploit. The best way to do that is to load up the tomatoes with so much beneficial bacteria and fungi that any blight spores that wander in are going to be trampled like a rabbit in a cattle stampede. Compost tea applied liberally to the leaves of the tomato is the best way to do this. And maybe a root drench as well.

I used to have problems with Fusarium, but since I began sprinkling compost tea over anything and everything, the Fusarium problem has mostly gone away.

John,

First off great analogy.

Are all blights created equal? Last summer I took a master gardener class and we did cover fungus and bacteria. Would your recommendation for tomato blight be the same answer / solution for apple blight? Or was that called fire blight?

A.J.

A.J. Gentry wrote:

John,

First off great analogy.

Are all blights created equal? Last summer I took a master gardener class and we did cover fungus and bacteria. Would your recommendation for tomato blight be the same answer / solution for apple blight? Or was that called fire blight?

A.J.

Not all blights are equal. The most insidious ones are the ones that go through some sort of exponential growth phase in a very short time, so that one day the crop looks fine and the next day it is reduced to a pile of goo. The blight that cause the Irish Potato famine (more on that here) is in that category. Unfortunately, it has a lot of company in that category, which means that having a healthy diverse ecosystem is a must if you want to protect yourself for the possibility of blight.

Here is a report on some work out of Germany that yeast may provide some protection against fire blight in apples. It sounds preliminary, but what could it hurt to toss a little sourdough starter in with the compost tea foliar spray?

Copied from Black rot treatment for grapes without spraying Forum:

Ken Peavey wrote:In '09 my tomato and potato crops were completely destroyed by Late Blight, P Infestans. While it is not a fungus, it displays some similar traits. In searching for a remedy (there is none, by the way), I tried some things which slowed down the destruction just a bit.

Surgery
Removing the infected part of the plant as soon as the problem is detected. Effects negligible due to the nature of the oomycete.
Removal of lower leaves and branches of plants in order to improve air circulation and promote a dryer environment. This slowed progress of the disease through sections of field.
Complete removal of the infected plant. It was already too late for the field in this instance.

Compost Tea
How long you brew it determines the dominant microbe. A day or so favors fungal populations. A couple of days promotes bacteria. 3 days or more promotes protozoa. The fungal dominant tea serves to place the beneficial microbes from the tea on the leaf, taking up the space which could otherwise be inhabited by the malevolent fungus.
Trying this in the case of P Infestans, I found the plants sprayed with the tea were among the last to go down. The spread of the infection through the plant was slowed, but it was unstoppable.

Here's another thread with some good information: major Late blight outbreak.

Why not learn true plant nutrition so you can address you nutritional deficiencies that are the REAL root cause of it. And yes, it has to do with fungi, bacteria, and proper trace mineral nutrition.

Here's a starter link for the learning path you should follow...
https://farmacyseeds.net/forums/showthread.php/58-Start-Here
hope this helps you and you farming operation. I know it did mine... DRASTICALLY.

cheers!

Rebootag

John Elliott wrote:

Not all blights are equal. The most insidious ones are the ones that go through some sort of exponential growth phase in a very short time, so that one day the crop looks fine and the next day it is reduced to a pile of goo. The blight that cause the Irish Potato famine (more on that here) is in that category. Unfortunately, it has a lot of company in that category, which means that having a healthy diverse ecosystem is a must if you want to protect yourself for the possibility of blight.

Here is a report on some work out of Germany that yeast may provide some protection against fire blight in apples. It sounds preliminary, but what could it hurt to toss a little sourdough starter in with the compost tea foliar spray?

John,

Excellent info. Thank you so much for the detail. Sourdough. Huh.

This made for great albeit technical reading.

I appreciate you passing it along.

A.J.

Unfortunately, it has a lot of company in that category, which means that having a healthy diverse ecosystem is a must if you want to protect yourself for the possibility of blight

Yes, this is PART of what I am referring to. The other part has to do with properly supporting that biology with adequate and properly balanced trace mineral nutrition. Seriously, blight becomes a thing of the past. Period. I encourage you to consider thinking not from a warefare mentality of "destroying a particular pathogen" either with another or a chemical, but rather to supple the nutrition and biology to prevent the issue all together, with the added benefit of increased quality, storage life and yields as well as nutrition. Whenever you work with ANY biological system, you should work with the system as a whole and from the understanding that all biology relies on the same nutrition to perform the same processes. Here's a basic image that might help:

Cheers
Rebootag

Hi Giselle, we certainly have similar climates, judging from our profiles!
I was thinking "I've been round the block a couple of times with late blight, where's that thread"
Aand Ken had got in first

Ken Peavey wrote:Here's another thread with some good information: major Late blight outbreak.

I think that nutrition is a biggie, as well as having reasonable air flow- I always go away at the peak of the growing season and come back to a rampant jungle
I've had a few bad late blight years in a row and the place where I was on holiday had it.
That blight was in a tunnel house, and the unnatural environments of greenhouses and hydroponics makes me wonder...
It appearing or not seems a bit random in my case, but if it shows up again I'll get onto the teas!
I was terrified I'd return to another solanum catastrophe, but this season my toms look great.

I think you're onto the right idea Leila!

Here's another little tip video..

Leila Rich please post a a picture of your garden now on the Garden Picture Exchange thread so we can compare
to your previous post. Your runner beans had not run, etc.