Help...is this blight?

[beanie3]

help....i have come home to this....what is it? and what can i do? All advice welcome x

[Unwashed]

It looks very much like it to me.  If it is there's nothing to do but burn everything.

[beanie3]

oh no - they are my outside tom's and i am keeping my greenhouse door tightly shut.  Can i use the green unaffected tom's somehow?  Oh what a horrible horrible pain...........

What else does blight affect?

[Unwashed]

In a day or two the green toms will turn black too, but you might well be able to make green tomato chutny if you're very quick.  I'm guessing it's Phytophthora infestans and it particularly affects potatoes but I think most of the solanaceae tribe are susceptible.

[Robert_Brenchley]

If you work fast you can still use any tome that hasn't turned brown. Don't expect to keep them indoors if there's a trace of a brown mark; they grow luxuriant mould and rot.

[Unwashed]

Is it even worth trying to ripen them Robert?  Won't they already have got infected?

[beanie3]

Okay i am now picking the green ones.  thanks peeps - any good recipes for green tomatoes anyone?

[Robert_Brenchley]

If they're absolutely free of infection they'll still ripen, but it's safer to use thm for chutney!

[beanie3]

robert how do they ripen once picked - sorry very thick question probably - but if i dont ask i will never know!

[Unwashed]

In a bag with a ripe banana.  Dad used to put them on the window ledge but they don't ripen very fast like that.

[beanie3]

Okay i am off to buy a ripe banana tomorrow - thank you to everyone for all you advice.

[Digeroo]

I have tried ripening fruit from blighted plants in the past and found they all go brown before they ripened even with a banana.   Sorry I think it is chutney tine too.

[beanie3]

okay thanks for letting me know.  I think you maybe right.  Thanks.

[hippydave]

im with digaroo i got 21 pounds of green toms off my blighted outdoor plants put them in trays on the windowsil with ripe bananas and they all went black with in a few days so had to bin the lot had i made chutney i would have something to show from them.

[grawrc]

You can tell if they are blighted, even if they aren't brown, by the smell. They lose that fab tom smell and gradually smell disgusting. If they don't have the tom smell I burn them.

Burnt about 4 kilos today. Boohoo!

But the cherry toms at the other end of my plot are still good. And my potatoes are unaffected.

[beanie3]

so can i ask why burn them?  and what do you do with the growbags? 

[grawrc]

The blight lives on the living plant tissue. If you burn the plants you know that everything is dead including the blight. If you compost it there is always the chance it will survive and strike again. Mind you clearly it does survive anyway since it strikes most years. Hey ho! Growbags should be OK to be composted once the plants are removed I think.

[beanie3]

okay thanks - dont think i will risk it with the growbags though - i will dump them rather then put it in my compost bin. 

[Robert_Brenchley]

It survives because people don't eliminate volunteer potatoes ruthlessly enough. Infected spuds survive to spread the disease once again.

[beanie3]

So Robert what would you suggest - i want to make sure I am doing everything to eliminate this.  Do i need to put some chemical on and around the area the growbags sat?

The sad thing is - i wasn't quick enough to save my green tom's : (  What a horrible thing blight is.