Blight killed my tomatoes

[Epiphany]

The entire community garden where I have a plot has been infected with blight. I went away for a week long vacation, and come back to find rotted nasty tomato plants. EVeryone around me had the same condition. I talked to a couple of the more experienced growers there and they told me it was blight. I've pulled all my tomato plants and bagged them for the trash. :

My fingerling potatoes that I was so proud of from Irish Eyes seeds are also affected. The growers at the garden said to either cut off everything above ground and wait 3 weeks then harvest the potatoes, or just let them be and harvest when they are ready because the blight doesn't go underground. I've also been trying to find some info online about what to do and now I'm just confused.

Does anyone here know what I should do about my potatoes? Should I harvest them now? Cut off the above ground part and wait? Treat them with copper and hope for the best?

Any advice for this newbie gardener would be greatly appreciated! Oh and for all my tomato plants. I'm just so sad I could

[serenetabbie]

That sucks! I am so sorry to hear that Hopefully someone will know the answer to your potato question.

I admit to being pretty worried about this. You are not too far from us, really, and we have had a lot of warnings from neighboring counties here in PA too.

[mamadelbosque]

Ugh, that sucks! We lost all our tomatoes last year to... something, still not sure what. And while my tomatoes still look (mostly) OK this year, I'm not sure how long that'll last - they all have yellow leaevs on the bottom w/ black spots. DH needs to spray again tommorrow!!

[Epiphany]

NY Times has an article about this.

I'm still searching for what to do with my fingerlings. From the information I found on this website, it looks like I should cut the above ground parts off and wait two to three weeks and then harvest the potatoes. *sigh*

I did harvest one of the smaller plants to see what it looked like and it seems the tubers are fine, just smallish.

[milagras]

Ugh.

I am so sorry you have experienced this. Did you buy your plants from a local nursery? Or did you start from seed?

I've had this happen and it is devastating. You work so hard and then ... the plants succumb to this horrible blight. I try to grow plants from seeds or volunteers from the previous year's harvest, but sometimes, I have to buy locally. It's such a gamble.

[Epiphany]

Thanks everyone for replying. The sympathy is much appreciated

Milagras, I started some from seed and a couple were from a local woman that has a small, organic, greenhouse. I asked and none of the ones she kept have any problems. There are a lot of plots that had tomatoes in the community garden. I'm guessing possibly one or more of them had tomatoes from a big garden store and that combined with the unusually rainy and humid weather we've been having, and the poor soil there, caused the blight to flourish.

I cut the tops off my fingerling potatoes today. My garden is small, and the food I grow isn't necessary for us to get thru the winter; but wow, the sadness and general suckiness of the situation put me in a bad mood all day. Gave me a teeny tiny peek into what people who do rely on growing their own food must feel when something like this happens.

[lmonter]

Yeah, cutting off the tops if they're on their way is fine. Up here, you can let a light frost kill off the potato tops and then harvest all those suckers. Gives the potatoes time to get bigger and mature a bit. The last week or two that you've got them in the ground don't water much if at all so the skins can toughen a little if you're going to try to store them for a little bit (although if you're going to eat them within a week or two this doesn't matter so much). Well, and so you don't get those lovely cracks in the middle because a ton of water freaks out the potatoes that are trying to grow. Btdt. *sigh*