Another blight thread --- scream! scream! scream!

[Quirky]

I am so upset. I did everything "right" -- I grew all of my tomatoes (12+ different varieties) from seed, have planted and fertilized and everything organically. I have around 40 tomato plants in two raised beds. And I definitely, positively, have late blight. Pretty much every plant shows some signs even though I'm still getting green and red fruit.

I'm in NJ and the weather has just been awful -- rain rain rain and more rain. Plus there are a lot of home gardens around here and I'm sure most of them were NOT started from seed, but from big box tomatoes that have spread the late blight.

I put so much work and love into these tomatoes. I am so angry and sad.

[Buzzer Beater]

I'm sorry... that just sucks big time.

The weather doesn't help that crap at all- my girlfriend in NY sent me an article from the Times and it just broke my heart. My toms are my babies!

: for the box stores.

[janey99]

I'm in NJ too - I just posted on the other blight thread - 35 plants for me. I hate the big box stores as much as anyone, but I wonder if our weather in NJ didn't have more to do with it. My yard is totally fenced, and my garden is fenced within that, so double fencing, but I still got terrible blight, I think from the rain and humidity. Also, my plants were soooo healthy that they were huge and probably crowding each other a little - once the dampness took hold in one area, it spread too fast for me to do anything.



Jane

[Quirky]

Hey, I'm a Jane too, and went by Janey for many years!

It's an airborne disease spread by fungal spores, we had to have gotten it from somewhere.

Next year I'll definitely space mine out further -- it got a little too crowded in my beds.

For now since most of the plants still seem healthy overall I'm cutting off all the diseased branchlets and hoping that I can get more tomatoes to ripen before the plants succumb.

[janey99]

Good luck - I hope you save some of your plants. I ripped all mine out this morning and salvaged as many green unblemished tomatoes as I could. I read on the internet that some people have had luck washing the tomatoes with a 10% bleach solution and then with soap and water, and letting the, ripen indoors. I'll keep you posted.

At the very least, my fingernails are very white now from the bleach!

Jane

[Dandelionkid]

: How sad. My tomatoes mean a huge amount to me too.

[belltree]

Originally Posted by janey99

Good luck - I hope you save some of your plants. I ripped all mine out this morning and salvaged as many green unblemished tomatoes as I could. I read on the internet that some people have had luck washing the tomatoes with a 10% bleach solution and then with soap and water, and letting the, ripen indoors. I'll keep you posted.

Our CSA tried that and the tomatoes were black in 4 days (indoors). They had to get rid of all potatoe plants and 300 out of 1000 tomato plants. So far our tomatoes are fine, but blight seems to hit quickly.

[janey99]

Originally Posted by belltree

Our CSA tried that and the tomatoes were black in 4 days (indoors). They had to get rid of all potatoe plants and 300 out of 1000 tomato plants. So far our tomatoes are fine, but blight seems to hit quickly.

Well, I was just coming to post that IT'S NOT WORKING! I pulled about 30 tomatoes off the table today that have giant blight lesions on them. I'm trying to convince myself that those tomatoes must have had the lesions when I put them on the table and I just didn't notice, but deep in my heart I know better. I'm sure I'll check tomorrow and there will be twenty more with spots that weren't there today. I'm sickly obsessed with the process now, so I'll just remove them one by one as they get afflicted, rather than just throw them all out at once now like I should.

If DH says "well, you did what you could" one more time, there's going to be a homicide!

Jane

[Quirky]

My CSA got hit too. I saw rows of tomatoes yesterday just totally destroyed.

I've just spent the better part of two days pruning all the affected leaves off my plants, putting up more rows of twine on my florida weave to separate them and improve air circulation, and fertilizing them with worm castings. I wonder if it will all have been in vain....

[Teenytoona]

ok, so I'm wondering, how do I know if the plants are blighted exactly? Does it mean you can't eat any of the fruits? (it seems yes from what you're all saying). I have one plant that is yellowish and wilty, but it's produced fruit that looks normal.

[janey99]

Originally Posted by Teenytoona

ok, so I'm wondering, how do I know if the plants are blighted exactly? Does it mean you can't eat any of the fruits? (it seems yes from what you're all saying). I have one plant that is yellowish and wilty, but it's produced fruit that looks normal.

Well, I have some tomatoes that have ripened despite having brown leathery blemishes on parts of them, and I have been cutting those parts off and eating the tomatoes or freezing them chopped up. I have not died yet! Most of my brown spots have been on the top half of the fruit, above the equator, so I've been basically cutting each fruit in half. A terrible waste, but better than wasting the whole thing, I suppose!

FWIW, but my blighted plants have not appeared yellowish and wilty, but with creeping brown dying leaf sets from the bottom up, progressing to brown patches on the stems, progressing to green and red fruits with the blemishes, especially where the fruits have been touching any browned leaves. Maybe your plants don't have blight?

Good luck,

Jane

[babycarrier]

I lost almost everything this year! I am so .... sad. We didn't raise our own plants but buy them from what I thought was about as non-big box as we could choose.

I was about to make bunches of sauce for the freezer. We have garden sauce at the first snowstorm. No sauce this year. No tomato sandwiches. Damn - so far our cherry tomatoes seem ok.

And last night I know some on my counter were ok and today had big smushy lesions.

ARGH!

[janey99]

Originally Posted by farmlife

I lost almost everything this year! I am so .... sad. We didn't raise our own plants but buy them from what I thought was about as non-big box as we could choose.

I was about to make bunches of sauce for the freezer. We have garden sauce at the first snowstorm. No sauce this year. No tomato sandwiches. Damn - so far our cherry tomatoes seem ok.

And last night I know some on my counter were ok and today had big smushy lesions.

ARGH!

I think we need to start a support group! My DH is over hearing about it, and today a co-worker said "enough already, get over it!"

They just don't understand.

I defiantly mourn them all:

Mr. Stripy
Mortgage Lifter
Rutgers
Eva's Purple Ball
Black Crim
Caspian Pink
Roma
Sungold
Ladybug
Sweet Grape, and
the yellow one whose name I can't even remember

Jane

[PiesandAbrosmama]

Looks like I get to join in the late blight sadness. . .tom's are taking a beating from it just popped up last 2 days and the hornworms arrived too! Yikes i'm not sure what will be saved. . .

[Quirky]

I'm in the support group. My dh totally doesn't get it either, and has also been heard to mutter under his breath about how this process was supposed to save money....

[janey99]

Originally Posted by Quirky

I'm in the support group. My dh totally doesn't get it either, and has also been heard to mutter under his breath about how this process was supposed to save money....

Oh yeah, I've heard the comments about the "$2000 squash and the $500 carrot."

I always say, "honey, don't forget about your near herniated disc from humping soil - you can't put a price on that!"

On the bright side, we did enjoy some ratatouille with hacked up, slightly blighted tomatoes tonight - it was delicious!

Jane

[savithny]

Yeah, we lost all ours this week. Last weekend we had a picnic for DH's work, and 2 plant pathologists admired our still-healthy tomatoes. On Wednesday, I went out to pick some basil and.... half of them were dead, the other half clearly blighted. DH pulled them all and black-bagged them to heat them up to hopefully kill the spores.

And went I went to pick up my CSA share at the farmer's market this morning, they were telling members that the farm lost all 3000 tomato plants to the blight this week too.

My DH is working on a tomato breeding project at the University here. The research farm grows tomatoes and potatoes, and they've managed to keep blight at bay only with a steady program of alternating antifungal spraying that they started as soon as there was word blight was in the county.

Other than a 5-day spray cycle of either copper mixtures (organic farming aprpoved) or conventional antifungals (that DH actually prefers because of the metals issue), there's not a lot you can do since it is windborne and can travel miles and miles in rainy wind. MILES. And at least here in NY state we've had a lot of cool, rainy days. Can't stop it from getting into the garden with fences, it doesn't care where the seedlings came from (all orus were either bought from organic farmers at the market or were leftovers from DH's seedling starts for work), and all it takes is a few plants in your entire county to start it going, so even if every immediate neighbor had started their own plants from seed, one person five miles away with a few sad little plants from Lowes could give it to all of you.

The most heartbreaking thing was the rain of little green tomatoes as DH was pulling up the plants. There were bushels of them. We got three ripe cherry tomatoes off one vine. Three.

At least nothing is blighting my basil.

[rainbowmoon]

Our CSA saved their toms with the copper spray. What is the issue with the metals? We were told it is safer than caffeine consumption.

Originally Posted by savithny

Yeah, we lost all ours this week. Last weekend we had a picnic for DH's work, and 2 plant pathologists admired our still-healthy tomatoes. On Wednesday, I went out to pick some basil and.... half of them were dead, the other half clearly blighted. DH pulled them all and black-bagged them to heat them up to hopefully kill the spores.

And went I went to pick up my CSA share at the farmer's market this morning, they were telling members that the farm lost all 3000 tomato plants to the blight this week too.

My DH is working on a tomato breeding project at the University here. The research farm grows tomatoes and potatoes, and they've managed to keep blight at bay only with a steady program of alternating antifungal spraying that they started as soon as there was word blight was in the county.

Other than a 5-day spray cycle of either copper mixtures (organic farming aprpoved) or conventional antifungals (that DH actually prefers because of the metals issue), there's not a lot you can do since it is windborne and can travel miles and miles in rainy wind. MILES. And at least here in NY state we've had a lot of cool, rainy days. Can't stop it from getting into the garden with fences, it doesn't care where the seedlings came from (all orus were either bought from organic farmers at the market or were leftovers from DH's seedling starts for work), and all it takes is a few plants in your entire county to start it going, so even if every immediate neighbor had started their own plants from seed, one person five miles away with a few sad little plants from Lowes could give it to all of you.

The most heartbreaking thing was the rain of little green tomatoes as DH was pulling up the plants. There were bushels of them. We got three ripe cherry tomatoes off one vine. Three.

At least nothing is blighting my basil.

[workjw]

Originally Posted by savithny

Other than a 5-day spray cycle of either copper mixtures (organic farming aprpoved) or conventional antifungals (that DH actually prefers because of the metals issue), there's not a lot you can do since it is windborne and can travel miles and miles in rainy wind. MILES. And at least here in NY state we've had a lot of cool, rainy days. Can't stop it from getting into the garden with fences, it doesn't care where the seedlings came from (all orus were either bought from organic farmers at the market or were leftovers from DH's seedling starts for work), and all it takes is a few plants in your entire county to start it going, so even if every immediate neighbor had started their own plants from seed, one person five miles away with a few sad little plants from Lowes could give it to all of you.

So true. Everyone in our county is losing their tomatoes. We've lost 300 plants this year. We don't even know anyone local that we can send our regular customers to. We haven't had this much rain in the spring/summer since.... well I honestly can't remember when. It's been a horrible year here in west Tn, and not just for tomatoes. We've produced about 1/3 of the veggies this year than we did last year.

We live in a very rural/farming area, and it has really affected our local economy. Most of us sell to local restaurants and grocery stores, so they are having to go elsewhere to get their produce, which makes it more costly for everyone.

Rain, rain go away...... I never thought I'd be cursing rain in August!

[savithny]

Originally Posted by rainbowmoon

Our CSA saved their toms with the copper spray. What is the issue with the metals? We were told it is safer than caffeine consumption.

It's not gonna hurt you in the amounts that remain on your produce (though wash them well!). As people point out, copper is an essential micronutrient.

But it isn't inherently safer across the board than every conventional option. It is just as hazardous for agricultural workers to handle, it is just as toxic to fish if it is released in too-concentrated amounts, and it is more persistent in the environment than many of the conventional antifungals - it builds up over time to the point that it will kill soil microbes and earthworms, if it used yearly in the same locations. With good crop rotation practices, where you won't be growing any solanaceae in that field for another 3-5 years, its less of an issue -- but if you're known for your tomatoes and grow a lot, that may mean that the increased spraying for the next few years as blight (hopefully) gets frozen out and driven back will mean heavier use of sprays.

Even for organic farming there are cost/benefit analyses being made. Since there are limits (either imposed by organic farming rules or by the farmer's own sense of what is right) to how much of it you can use, they're having to balance saving a crop by using a *lot* of the stuff (relatively speaking) so that their members will have some tomatoes, vs. not spraying, or spraying less often, to load their soils less heavily. The thing about *all* the antifungals this year is that they're pretty much only working preventatively, so once you start spraying, you're invested in continuing to do so until you've gotten a harvest for your time and effort.