Early blight in my upside down tomato plants

[justmandy]

I was out admiring my little garden and noticed some discoloration on my largest tomato plant's leaves...it's upside down in a 3 gallon bucket full of lovely top soil/organic compost-some my own some from a nursery. I plucked the stem with 4 leaves off and searched the symptoms-it's early blight.

I had problems with early blight (and other fungi) 2 years ago-in a very different part of the yard with almost no air circulation and some plant crowding problems. Now, I KNOW these are not problems since this plant is dangling by itself far from any plant. It gets about 8 hours of broken sun a day (good sun in the morning and evening-there's a tree that blocks some in the afternoon)

I searched and found I could spray the leaves with a compost tea, but when I water the plants, the water runs down on them (being upside down and all) isn't that basically the same thing? Should I use a manure compost tea? I thought hanging the plants upside down was supposed to reduce these problems.

Any advice would be GREATLY apriciated! I hate to think my garden is already doomed! I'm considering getting a funguside...that would be cheeper then loosing the garden. Help before I fall off the organic wagon! (and have to change my siggy- )

[VWChick]

:

I noticed the same thing on my container grown plants yesterday. Hoping someone has some great ideas!

[beebalmmama]

No solutions here. I was hoping for answers too because my tomatoes are also in sad shape. I'm ready to yank a few before I lose the whole lot. I called my local ext service and they told me to wait a week, because we had some cool wet weather this past week. But yesterday it warmed up and they still look bad and now my peppers are having symptoms too.: How do you know for sure it is early blight? My toms are having yellowed leaves all over and big time curling, but stiff. There are some that have brown spotting, but kind of all over not in rings. My peppers are curling too and have more browning on the leaves. I am afraid to wait a week and feel like I need to take some action quickly!!

[justmandy]

Hmmm, I'm still a beginner but it sounds like you may be watering too much or have too much fertilizer in the soil (nitrogen based) take a few leaves in, internet search tomato diseases, tomato plants dying and other phrases like that to get a proper diagnosis. It doesn't sound like early blight.

So far I've removed the infected leaves and am watching to see what happens.

This has to be used in this tread :

[EricaLeigh]

Another mama looking for help with my tomatos! Mine are yellow with brown spots! They don't look well!

[beebalmmama]

I'm getting suspectful of my compost. We started our garden this year and bought compost. Both beds have compost from the same place, but the one bed that looks worse had compost that I didn't think looked cured completely. Do you think its burning the plants? And if so what can I do about it now? The other bed had well cured compost, although I'm still nervous about it. I'm still covering them at night in hoop houses, but now removing them during the full day. Our temps at night are now around 50, should I keep them uncovered all night now for overnight air circulation? I don't water overhead and try to water earlier as opposed to later in the day, usually just once. They are planted fairly close together, but being staked right now. The local ext, service says the area is usually okay with nitrogen, but low in posphate, any ideas??

[justmandy]

My freind is going through the same thing with her compost-she called the nursery and he said it may still be decomposing and getting too hot and taking the water away from the plants. He gave her soil conditioner to put over the soil where the plants are still alive and to mix into the soil (plants and all) where they died. Stop covering them at night-my understanding is you only have to do that when there's a chance of frost-you need the air circulation more then the heat at this point. Be sure not to water them when the sun is on them.

[CrunchyMamaToBe]

I picked this up here at MDC last year:

tomato problem solver

Good for helping you diagnose your spots, etc.

But I still need to know how to keep blight away from my tomato plants!