The humid then wet weather has lfinally ed to melt-down down in our garden. Discovered on Sunday that one of my Gardener's Delight plants had blight. I'd been wondering what it looked like but there was no mistaking when it finally hit. Destroyed the plant but saved the green, healthy looking toms. Destroyed 4 other plants that looked as though they might be on the way even though all the toms looked fine ( i understand that they can go rotten, even if picked looking ok). Have moved the remaining plants (all in Black Morrison buckets) onto the lawn in the hope that the open air will keep them healthy (just an idea!)
An hour ago, Iooked in on my hitherto healthy and happy Homesteads and Basil plants in my conservatory and got a huge shock. The basil leaves had gone brown and wilted and the toms were wilting horribly and some leaves were browning. THEN discovered that I had absentmindedly left the punnet with the healthy looking but blighted toms, in the conservatory overnight. Will this have done the damage?
As I still have some healthy looking plants on the patio, next to the conservatory ( grew a lot in different locations this year) I've reluctantly destroyed the lovely Homestead plants and saved the green toms.
Next question is: while the healthy-looking green but blighted toms are still looking good - will they be ok to eat or make chutney with?
Last question is: How big should they be before they are ok to eat? I have saved anything from three quaters of an inch upwards.
??? ???
I tried saving mine last year and it was disastrous! The ones I tried tasted disgusting and most were affected by the blight so they wen't rotten anyway. Hope you have more luck than I had!
Old Bird
;D
So sorry,
It feels awful doesn't it, when you lose crops after all that work - but take heart, if you rescue all your clean
toms and lay them out some where indoors there is a chance you can salvage some.
This happened to me recently, had several plants in various positions like you, when one plant just ' dropped'
with blight. I took the whole lot out keeping all the fruit I could - mostly the larger ones.
I keep a check right up to full ripeness before I use them, had to discard a few but didn't lose as many
as I thought I would. Made tomato sauce yesterday so take heart.
Floss
Thanks Flossie - I'm off to lay them on some newspaper the now bare shelves in the conservatory, which, before the attack were filled with basil plants. Any idea how small/immature ok to eat?
You'll need to go through any picked tomatoes every day and bin or burn any that look blighted. You can use the green ones for chutney: if there's the beginnings of blight, cut it off & use the rest; by the time you've boiled it with vinegar & lots of other ingredients for a few hours it doesn't seem to affect the taste. But I wouldn't eat the blighted ripe ones; like Old bird says, the flavours not so good. (Though I have used the one in a cooked tomato sauce with noticing anything odd.)
It's a pain, but if you're vigilant it's surprising how many you can save - just be ruthless with any suspect ones!
I've just pulled up the remains of my crop (80 or so plants), and as I put the last bit in the bin I had a text message - Blight Watch, with an early warning of blight in my area!!!
Your best bet in future is to spay ever chemical know to man to kill the blight.
Besides put the blight tom in green house did even wash your hand when you start to deal with the green house plants. My bet is you infected the whole green house but there is good news. You will need to sterilize the whole greenhouse now that blight is present there or you will have do with out tomatoes grown there.
My sympathy for you plight but at least you be smart enough not to make same mistake again.