tomato blight

[womble]

Looking at the blightwatch maps, blight always seem to be first near the sea, either from abroad or because temps are higher there?

I don't get it, if you bin them, then they just end up on the council run landfill. Is it me?

[Capsid]

Looking at the blightwatch maps, blight always seem to be first near the sea, either from abroad or because temps are higher there?

I think the spores can get blown from abroad

I don't get it, if you bin them, then they just end up on the council run landfill. Is it me?

I think this means the green bin for garden waste recycling, the council composters reach a very high temperature and will kill spores.

[womble]

I don't have a council green bin for composting, nor do alot of people. I would have a large bet that most of the blighted tomatoes go into the normal bin.
What does this mean? It means, the more I write about this, the more I am convincing myself the chances of it being passed on in your garden from year to year is minuscule.

[missycass]

Ive got blight on my outdoor tomatoes but none on the ones in the greenhouse or the one pot in the conservatory. Now I am worried about putting the rotten plants in the council bags for passing on these spores. Would it be better to burn them?

[Demeter]

missycass - if the council bags are for council composting then there should not be a problem as the large-scale composting they do will easily get hot enough to kill even the oospores.

From what I was looking at yesterday I think even a decent home-composting system should get hot enough (my dalek certainly does) and anyway I get the impression that the formation of oospores (the hardy ones) is pretty unusual - and the normal ones would certainly not survive composting as they need to be on plant material and the plant material itself would be rotting down.

Based on what I've seen so far, I'm of the same view as Womble. I am and always have been a great believer in the power of composting to kill nasties.

e.g. - weblife.org: Humanure Handbook: Chapter 3: Compost Miracles
(If you've never read this then prepared to be amazed!)

[Cutecumber]

Well, from my research, the spores can and do indeed survive the compost heap - the key is that they survive on infected plant material. Not everything in a heap rots equally, nor at the same temperature. You would have to have some serious monitored system to ensure all nasties had gone. Most amateur gardeners do not get hot heaps purely because they cannot get enough waste together at once.

The soil and compost issue is different, however - if you remove all the plant material, spores cannot survive. It has been found that spores blow in rather than remain in the soil to re-infect the next year's crop. Some spores do metamorphose, but not so much in UK, I believe.

Basically, you need to be responsible as a grower for yours and everyone else's future crops - you need to dispose of your blighted material carefully - by burning or sending to an appropriate green waste facility - or the problem will continue.

In theory - ok, it's not ever going to happen - if everyone burnt the infected stuff at the same time, we'd kill off all the spores! It's not quite as simple as that, but you see the point. In the UK, re-infection is usually put down to discarded potato crops - huge amounts of blighted tubers which lie uncovered through the winter. I can't say whether this is an excuse (ie. let's blame the farmers! or a reality)

When it comes to highly infectious plant diseases, just like human ones - hygiene is the key.

[fwuffydragon]

Hmm - some of my plants got blight, but others about 3 feet away didn't!

My beef tomatoes got it so badly I've had to dig them up and black bag them - going to take to tip and put in green waste so they can deal with them properly! The rest of them (gardeners delight, Ildi and golden sunrise) appear to be fine so far (fingers crossed). I did feed them recently, and they're all out in the open in a really sunny spot - the beef tomatoes are the only ones not sheltered by a huge tree, so I think that might have been the deciding factor...

[moonshadow]

you poor thing! it's heart-breaking to throw them away. better luck next year!

[Wren]

I don't understand why you are all throwing them away!, Its not like they all go down with it at once! as soon as i noticed the first signs of it on a few tomatoes, then i got the rest of the healthy fruits off the plant straight away washed and made shed loads of green tomato chutney.

I binned relatively few because i were inspecting the fruits on a daily basis after warnings on here, and as soon as i spotted a couple of fruits with the tale tale brown bruising then off came the rest .

You might not get the red , juicy tomatoes that you were initially expecting but no need to bin the lot. If you have lots of good green ones still unaffected then get them off fast an read the recipe section .

Wren

[wheatleys wheels]

Generally when i've seen signs of blight I pick any good ones on my plant straight away and either make chutney or ripen them on my windowsill with a banana skin next to them and use them in cooking.

For all others SHOWING the blight I would throw them and spray the plant but keep the plant going. At the end of the season I pull up the plant and spray the ground. I know it may seem redundant but I hope to try and kill what's in my ground before the winter. The next year I plant in another section of my garden, but because my garden is small, before I plant the next year I spray the ground they are going to be in before planting the baby plants into the ground in the hope to stave it off a little longer. It seems to work. Then year 3 I try to go back to no spray but with all this wet weather we're having it's virtually guarenteed to happen in the garden for sure.

Obviously I only spray because I feel it's necessary. If I could find another way to prevent the blight I wouldnt spray but this way I do get a few fruits every year even in the blighted years we've had in the past 2.