What is this and to stop it ?

That's blight I'm afraid. Very little if anything you can do.

With blight, if you cut off all the tops (which stops the blight spreading down the stems to the tubers underground), you might find that you still have a crop that's ok underneath.

Yep, blight. I've just been to my friend's garden where I am loooking after her veg plot, and the outdoor tomatoes there look just like that. So far, touch wood, mine at home are looking ok, but I am going to have to be very very careful that I don't transmit it from one garden to the other. The warm, damp weather has been just the sort of thing that blight likes, unfortunately.

Leave it for a fortnight before you dig or you can still pick up blight spores that will stop your potatoes storing.

Yep I agree, it is 'late blight' I'm afraid.

My plants started showing the same symptoms as yours just over a week ago. At first I thought it was just leaves drying out in the exceptionally dry and warm weather we were having, but then after doing some research online I found that blight isn't just characterised by the black and dark brown spot and patches (wet weather symptoms) but also lighter brown ones (dry weather symptoms).

At that point it dawned on me that there was no doubt it was blight. I found that all the blight patches had developed in less sunny areas of the garden or on parts of the plants that had been put in the shade of the sun by the upper leaves and so the sun could not get through to them. Not only that but the amount of leaves I had was resulting in less than optimal air circulation, even though they didn't seem to be touching one another or touching the ground.

So I cut off all the lower leaves of the plants which had been affected by the blight as well as most of the other lower leaves (since it always seems to be the older leaves that get blight first) and any other leaves that I felt were impeding the air flow and sunlight. Then hey presto, I haven't seen anymore blight since, and I did all this about 10 days ago.

Sorry for the wall of text, anyway I would suggest you cut off any of the dodgy bits and bin them. Don't let your tomato plants touch the ground. They seem to be more susceptible to catching blight than potatoes and when they touch any damp ground they can catch blight very quickly.

If you have a copper spray you can buy or use then I would do that. It can be really helpful in stopping the spread of blight. If you start using it now then your plants might be ok for a little while longer because it seems you have the 'dry blight' which is not too bad for plants, but if you let the blight infection continue and a couple of days of very humid/wet weather comes along then 'wet blight' will start to become an issue and all your tom/potato/aubergine plants will be gone in about a week.

Could you put your location on your profile please - it would be helpful to others to know where blight is occurring.

Thanks everyone for help, will do needful as suggested

My location is West Sussex (near Gatwick airport, UK), willupdate on my profile


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