Grow Your Own Magazine

The toms in my GH are showing signs of blight , whilst the toms in my neighbours GH (which she lets me use) are fine. I've been stripping off the leaves as soon as the blight appears and hopefully the toms will swell enough to give me some sort of crop.

What do I need to do in respect of treating the GH for growing toms next year? Some are planted in buckets and some straight into the soil.

Amanda, firstly are you sure it is blight? And if so, bad luck

Secondly, don't worry too much. The blight fungus only lingers on vegetative material - that is, it can only survive on the plant foliage and fruit itself. It tends not to persist in the soil unless there is infected matter within.

So, clear out the greenhouse at the end of the season, being meticulous with the removal of foliage and fruit from those plants. If the blight has got to the stems badly, try and take out those plants before it spreads any further, and take out a reasonable amount of their roots. Agricultural articles I have read say that the infection should not persist for long in the soil itself.

Do your normal end-of-season cleaning and make sure there is nothing left to harbour problems for next year.

Thanks for that Cutecumber. I had been looking at pics of tomato blight on Google and it looked like it. Stems and fruit appear to be healthy, just grey/brown splodges on some of the leaves. Could it be something else?

It could also be botrytis? (Grey mould, although it's not always grey ) Although the treatment for that is the same - remove affected leaves/fruit, and it can spread through your crop quite badly too if you don't keep on top of it.
Whatever it turns out to be - good luck I've got blight in one greenhouse and botrytis in the other and seem to spend hours a day removing foliage, so I know what you're going through!

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Thanks for the Sarah. It's funny, the greenhouse that was given less attention is thriving and the one that was fussed over has the problem, perhaps there's a lesson there.

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yup

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Benign neglect, it's called!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 17th - The Big Dig

"the greenhouse that was given less attention is thriving and the one that was fussed over has the problem"

Is the direction of the door / ventilation different? Might be that the fungus has come in on the wind. Dunno if you can do much about it for the future though ...

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K's Garden blog last update 3rd August 2008

Our gardens run parallel, Greenhouses face the same direction as do the doors which seems a little strange.

The GH in the neighbours garden got a little less attention and it's doing better in respect of toms size and quantity. I wonder if I'd been a little too enthusiastic with how many leaves I'd been plucking on my GH pre blight. They look like lanky sad green sticks now.