Tomato Blight (Phytophthora infestans)
by matt @ 5:07 pm. Blogged under Eating and Drinking
This year I made quite some effort to grow our own vegetables in the garden; lettuces and beetroot have been very successful, I also had high hopes for my tomato plants. Unfortunately, having freed my biggest plants from the confines of their plastic greenhouse covering, they soon went brown, dried up and died… closely followed by my batch of outdoor plants residing not too far away. It seems that with all the wet weather we’ve been having, combined with moderate warmth, it’s been the perfect climate for Tomato Blight (Phytophthora infestans) to do its worst. I took some photographs as the web seems to be lacking for confirmation of Blight symptoms.
You can imagine I’m quite annoyed at the wasted effort of growing the tomatoes from seed, potting them, placing them into multiple grow bags, watering daily, pruning branches and buying organic plant food. Thankfully my six plants at the front of the house are showing no symptoms, although they did take a battering from a nearby football I suspect (could have been the strong winds).
The most amusing thing is that I gave some of my tomato plants to my neighbour and they look amazing - tall and strong, not like mine despite all my efforts… it’s very tempting to go and shake my diseased and dead plants around his - but that would pass the disease onto my only survivors next door 
From what I’ve read I actually have to be very careful about what I do with the diseased plant matter, I’ve bagged it all up to take to the dump (recycle area) but I may have to leave the tomato growing out next year as the spores could live in the garden through the winter.
Technorati Tags: tomatoes, tomato, tomato blight, potato blight, gardening tips, stem rot, Phytophthora infestans
Loading ...
August 8th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Shame Grandad is not here to help!
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Sympathies to Matt. Same thing happened to me, but my toms got blight in the Greenhouse. I had been misting a cucumber in the greenhouse and must have washed spores down into the grow bags. I lost 6 Marmande plants in 2 days wth a bumper crop.
Does anyone know if I need to disinfect the Greenhouse by spraying perhaps? And if so, with what?
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I’m not sure what ‘misting a cucumber’ is Pete but I’m glad it’s something you do in the greenhouse
In the end I lost all my tomato plants, even the ones out front went brown - managed to get 5 red cherry tomatoes… and that was only because I wrapped them in newspaper with a banana!