Author Topic: No red tomatoes?? - Is that black stem the reason? Is it too late to treat?  (Read 3793 times)

newspud9

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Last week's moan about no red tomatoes is swiftly followed by observing black fungus/canker on the stems and just beginning to affect the tops of some of the fruit. 

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/tomato/black-stems-on-tomatoes.htm


Is it too late to apply a fungicide and what has worked best for others? Many thanks for all the comments.



Deb P

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Blight…….? They are doomed I’m afraid…
If it's not pouring with rain, I'm either in the garden or at the lottie! Probably still there in the rain as well TBH....🥴

http://www.littleoverlaneallotments.org.uk

saddad

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I got a touch of blight on my outdoor tomatoes, but with some de-leafing and the cooler nights it seems to be held in check, perhaps long enough to ripen some fruit on the plants, larger fruits can be taken off and taken indoors and some will ripen if you check them daily and remove ones that show signs of blight.

Beersmith

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Well I hope your tomatoes have not been too badly hit. A week ago I had a good looking crop of sungold and some beefsteak ripening steadily.

Today I have a set of brown stemmed half dead plants.  The fruits themselves are showing brown marks, so that is it really.  Some you win some you lose.  But referring back to the original post, it is quite noticeable that the stems of my plants deteriorated far more than the leaves.  Looks like blight to me, but generally the leaves seem to go first.  Maybe it is a new variant, maybe a different fungal disease.?  Sometimes identifying plant diseases can be very difficult.
Not mad, just out to mulch!

tricia

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Yes, blight first noticed here last week on two of my outdoor plants,  mainly on the stems. One plant was so badly affected it was removed entirely but by the weekend most of the saved green tomatoes sitting on the kitchen windowsill had succumbed. The trusses on the virtually leafless remaining plants are heavy with still very green tomatoes so I don't have much hope that they will ripen before the blight gets them too  -  I doubt that there will be much sofrito made this year  :BangHead:.

Tricia  :wave:

Deb P

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I’ve also got blight on my lottie outdoor plants, still picking some ripe fruits but don’t think they will last much longer….
If it's not pouring with rain, I'm either in the garden or at the lottie! Probably still there in the rain as well TBH....🥴

http://www.littleoverlaneallotments.org.uk

Paulh

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I picked my first tomatoes of the season on Monday, beautiful plants with the best crop I've ever grown. I spent an hour last night cutting them down and salvaging what may perhaps yet ripen off the plants.

I think they were too close together - I usually get away with it but not is this warm, moist August.

gray1720

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Mine are finally starting to ripen (well, except the blue bayou, which have been purple on one side but green on the other for weeks) both outdoors and in the green house, but I've had to watch like a hawk for blight starting on the leaves, trim them back, and been spraying. I still have Dithane left -ghastly stuff, but then so is everything else that touches blight. 
My garden is smaller than your Rome, but my pilum is harder than your sternum!

Obelixx

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No spraying here on anything we will eat so I grow tomatoes and chillies in the polytunnel to get a longer season for ripening but also to protect them from blight and allow me to use a seep hose for watering without losing too much to evaporation.    They do get checked every day now, just in case and we have only just had our first picking this week - very late cos of the cold spring.   I did grow some outside in our first year here and they were great but needed far too much water.

Obxx - Vendée France

tricia

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I have 2 plants left outside,  a Coeur du boeuf with very heavy trusses of large fruit which are now slowly ripening  -  and no sign of blight and next to it a Harbinger where I've had to remove most of the leaves and there are 10cm lengths of totally black stems on the two branches I allowed to develop early on as I only had the one plant. Oddly,  the long trusses are gradually ripening,  for the most part blight free.

In my small greenhouse the 2 Suncherry and 1 Coeur du Boeuf are now ripening, luckily with no sign of blight,  so far.

Can't do much with having a very painful arthritic right hand, but have managed to make and freeze two containers of sofrito so far. I'm picking the Harbinger toms as soon as they start to colour and have more than a kilo ripening on my kitchen windowsill. They will be ready for making another batch in a couple of days.

I find it odd that the majority of the Harbinger tomatoes are ripening with no sign of blight even though there are long black areas on the stems and no leaves left on the plant!

Tricia  :wave:

pumkinlover

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Quote
I find it odd that the majority of the Harbinger tomatoes are ripening with no sign of blight even though there are long black areas on the stems and no leaves left on the plant!

It seems odd but good  :happy7:

Vinlander

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Blight came in days (maybe hours) after the worst flash downpour I've seen for years (in London). It went straight to the stems, so it was doubly bad.

Up till then I'd had maybe 5 ripe toms from 10x 2m+ outdoor plants that were loaded with ripening fruit.

I cut every blighted leaf, fruit and flower off and then tried to decide which fruits might ripen before the stem blight got to them.

I knew it was a gamble, but it paid off quite quickly when the squall was followed by some really hot weather.

The blight stopped dead, even in the stems. I managed to ripen a dozen or so fruit in the weeks of heat. when it returned it was a totally new infection, none of the original brown patches have grown even now.

Obviously you can't heat a garden to kill blight - I've written those plants off; but blight is now occasionally creeping into my polytunnel - I only have to remove leaves at the moment, but if I get stem patches I'll be tempted to apply heat to those patches - somehow - maybe flame them, maybe cauterise them, maybe a "bandage" wetted in situ with boiling water - we'll see.

If it works I might have a cure for stem patches in future - even in the garden.

Science is fun! And you often learn more from experiments that fail...

Cheers.

PS. I must  point out (again) that Dithane is indeed "-ghastly stuff" since all the alkylene bisdithiocarbamate fungicides taste of rotten cabbage (and have been "tested" on humans for less than 40 years).

Copper however has been tested for 180 years (since its accidental discovery - blight couldn't be found within a few miles of copper refineries).

It's not surprising that Copper isn't "ghastly" since it is absolutely essential to the mammal metabolism - pathways exist to deal with an excess (unlike zinc). The copper sulphate I buy (cheapest and most readily available) is sold as a feed supplement for animals - we don't need it as our diets are so diverse, but some animals are fed on monoculture.
With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

Deb P

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Well my indoor toms were culled yesterday, a load of caterpillars from what I suspect it tomato moth was on almost every bit of foliage, they had eaten bits out of most of the tomatoes too, so I’ve under up with only 10 viable plants left standing, and a load of unripe fruit from the culled plants…..arrrgh!
My peppers snd chillies are pants too, also attacked by caterpillars and what looks like dark brown blotches on the stems..I’m not having a very good greenhouse year this year! 🙄
If it's not pouring with rain, I'm either in the garden or at the lottie! Probably still there in the rain as well TBH....🥴

http://www.littleoverlaneallotments.org.uk

gray1720

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This is what excess copper can do - this is nearly a century after mining stopped, and much of the landscape is still free from vegetation. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/enormous-landmark-explorer-says-the-18997821

Acute copper poisoning can occur - though, as you say, the body does have mechanisms to deal with it - and copper salts as used in organic fungicides are all toxic. There's a big difference between trace element needs, see for example selenium. If LD50 calculated in rats is directly transferrable to humans (hopefully you will understand why that's (a) not always the case and (b) not calculated in humans!), about 2g of your copper sulphate could potentially kill someone of my body weight.

I don't know how that compares with Dithane but I assume that both are equally nasty, and use what I have as a last resort. As I've got Dithane, that's what the toms get. 

My garden is smaller than your Rome, but my pilum is harder than your sternum!

 

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