I think many of my tomato plants have blight!! :( :( :( ( I have about 45)
What can I do to stop is speading to the undieased ones and how can I get rid of the plants?
Will composting kill off the blight?
Would it be best to dig a trench to allow them to rot down, where I plan to put flowers in ?
Thanks
Jo
I had terrible problems with blight on my tomatoes last year, barely had enough for a jar of chutney, I composted the lot ( everyone told me to burn them ). :'(
This year I grew my toms in the compost I made last year and I can honestly say that I haven't seen a single leaf with blight on it, in fact it's been a bumper year, mostly down to the weather of course. The blight spores are obviously present but conditions haven't been suitable for them to develop. ;D
Even if I hadn't composted the diseased plants, blight being an airborne fungus would have wrecked the lot again if conditions had been warm & damp.
I don't know if you can stop it spreading at this stage, as Merry says, it is airbourne, so once one plant has it, pretty much guaranteed you are going to loose the lot! :'(
I sprayed with Bordeaux mixture and managed to last a week until I cracked and cut off all my acceptable tomatoes and put them on newspaper in a bedroom to ripen (together with a couple of overripe bananas and some ripe tomatoes) and though some were infected and have gone that weird brown wrinkled colour of blighty tomatoes, most are ripening nicely. I decided that home ripened ones (ie less tasty) were preferable to none at all.
Made green tomato chutney with the smaller ones, some shallots and some eating apples (since my Bramley's in its resting year). Now have several jars which I have to stop myself eating before Christmas!
The ripe ones got turned into ratatouille and frozen in takeaway boxes. The rest I am still ripening for tomato puree.
Oddly, the tiny ones that were still on the blighty plants have grown to be quite large and so far haven't gone brown - so I may get yet more tomatoes!
moonbells
I have blight too :'( :'(
Found it on my allotment toms last weekend. Picked all the full-sized toms I had, took em home and washed them, and they are now sitting in dishes in the windowsills, and I am hoping they will ripen. I will cook them up as I go along, hoping to get enough for a pot of bolognese.
I think the advice is to keep them somewhere warm-ish to help with the ripening, but to check frequently and remove any brown and blotchy ones.
Fortunately my ones at home are un-touched so far.