Recognising blight

[Sylvan]

Do the leaves go brown and crispy?

(Why, oh why did we move closer to civilisation? )

[jacob]

No! They go black and squishy!

[Sylvan]

Oh, thank goodness!
We had two or three really hot, humid days (2 at 19� and 1 at 26� ) and we live in a village now so the possibility is there. When I saw those dead leaves I panicked.

Perhaps the poor things would like some water...

[ginger ninger]

Here's a few photos Sylvan to help you recognise blight. Fingers crossed yours don't look anything like these.

[Sylvan]

A few of the leaves were hanging down, looking exactly like the ones in the bottom pic - brown and curled, but they were crispy and I thought I remembered reading somewhere that blighted leaves ought to be soggy.

I'm hoping it's just severe windburn, very low night temps and a bit of whingeing about the root disturbance we inflicted on them when we planted them out last week.

[Sylvan]

Well I can recognise blight now :-(

We had it at the end of September.

[bearded bloke]

It's got to some of mine as well but others are fine,I can live with it just so long as it leaves my festive spuds alone

[Nicos]

I lost over 30 plants with blight this year. ...never had it so bad.
I doubt I even managed to rescue a couple of pounds of toms from the whole lot!

Such a waste of time/effort/growing space too.
Will I grow as many next year???...hmmm- probably!

[Sylvan]

Me too Nicos

I think I might have lost fewer plants if I had recognised it earlier, since it started very slowly and took ages to spread to the other beds.
In fact, the armpits up by the house are still fine...

[Nicos]

I'm just making sure that I've very carefully removed any dead vegetation on and just below the surface of the beds. Bit of a pain and very slow work but fingers crossed it'll get rid of the majority of spores in the area.
Everything so far pulled up from the bed has been torched.

I'm also going to increase the planting distances and remove lower leaves earlier- and spray with Bordeaux mixture as from June ( if it's wet again)

I thought I'd left the worst of the blight probs back in the UK as the Cheshire summers were much damper than here.
Just goes to show doesn't it.
Back to my 'old methods' and see if they work.
I'll try again for a couple of years- and if all else fails I'll give up. Pity though

[Sylvan]

Is it OK to leave the roots in the soil or do I need to dig up the whole lot? (There is about a foot of stem below soil level)

[Nicos]

The whole plant- it works it's way downwards ( think of blighted spuds )
Pain or what eh?????

[Sylvan]

aaargh.

Hope the sun shines tomorrow in that case.