Septoria, Blight... what do I do to save my tomatoes?

[tankgirl73]

Here's a video I made showing my tomato plants:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOg9tb8RIO0

I've been dealing with what I think is septoria for awhile, just on one plant at first, then it spread to its neighbours. Then it's jumped boxes and I've been finding little bits in EVERY box, though the furthest boxes are only slightly affected.

But the first box is just looking terrible. I've also started seeing spots that look more like early blight than septoria. But I'm not totally certain. It's my first time growing tomatoes and I've only got google to help me ID the spots.

From what I understand, septoria only affects leaves, but not the stems or tomatoes. Blight spots appear on stems and can cause ugly black spots on the fruit. My fruit all seems 100% perfect (though frustratingly green). I saw a couple spots on the stems on one of the plants that I thought might have blight.

Then today, on the "bad" box, which seemed very suddenly much worse today, and which I still thought was septoria, there are spots ALL OVER the stems. The fruit is still 'clean'.

What should I do to save these tomatoes? Most of the plants I've just cut off (and will destroy) the spotty foliage. I have a couple plants that are now basically just a stem with several dozen fruits dangling off it. I know that leaves a risk for sunscald, but it's a slightly shady area so I think that's the LEAST of my worries.

But the "bad" plants, which are spotty all over through and through, and which have several branches that are not just spotty but now browning and shrivelling up... what should I do? Should I defoliate them to the bare minimum and hope the fruits ripen? Should I pull up the whole plant, and bring in all the green tomatoes (there are a LOT of them) and try to ripen them indoors? (I'd need instructions for doing that too)

And what on earth do I do for next year? Since it has spread at least a little bit to EVERY SINGLE box, where can I rotate them to???

[Hibou]

Yeesh. I'm dealing with blight for the first time too.
We picked them all and tossed the plants. I'm going to plant my tomatoes elsewhere next year. I don't think you're supposed to put them in the same spot for a year or so. Maybe you'll have to get some containers just for your tomatoes next year?

[tankgirl73]

Yeah, I'm realizing I'm going to need new boxes next year, which sucks, because I spent a lot of money setting things up this year and didn't want to add anything new for at least another year, maybe two, to recoup costs, ya know?

But aside from the tomatoes, I also have potato blight -- they're around another corner of the house. The tomatoes only have a wee bit of blight, it's really mostly the septoria that's the problem. But the potatoes, it's blight all the way. And my taters were in a special box just for taters -- bigger and deeper than my other boxes, and 100% compost for their dirt.

Now I can't use that box for potatoes for at least another year, maybe two.

So I'm thinking that I'll put carrots in my extra-deep box next year. I'd already been thinking of doing more carrots than I did this year anyway, they were REALLY successful and yummy and not labour-intensive. And I'll fill the boxes where the tomatoes were with beans and cucumbers and onions... but I'll need to build new boxes for tomatoes, and something for the potatoes too *sigh*

Anyway, I ended up pulling up the half-dozen tomato plants that were the most badly infected. Cleaned off all their leaves and brought them inside to hang in a closet to ripen heh. The rest are still out there, picking off leaves as needed. We'll be getting frost in a few weeks anyway, so I'm just going to manage as best I can until then, at which point I'll have to bring all the fruit inside anyway. They're only JUST starting to blush a bit, in terms of ripening.