Is It Blight?

[dieselthedemon]

I think my potatoes are blighted, lovely green haulm's a couple of days ago.

Just pulled them all and left the actual potatoes under the soil, any idea how long I can leave them like this?

[jimbo2807]

Just got back from hols to find all 12 tomato plants in the garden completely gone to blight. Then went to the allotment and all 10 there are gone too. Gutted. We have 3 plants left in hanging baskets and they appear to be ok....fingers crossed.

BTW, the Sarpo Mira spuds at the allotment are fine so thats some good news.

[jimbo2807]

Is this the reason we call Britain, Blighty ?????

[SarzWix]

Is this the reason we call Britain, Blighty ?????

No, but it does seem to fit well after the last few growing seasons

Blighty is an English slang term for Britain, deriving from the Hindustani word vilāyatī (विलायती) (pronounced bilāti in many Indian dialects and languages) meaning "foreign", and is itself derived from the Arabic word wilayat, meaning a kingdom or ministry.

Blighty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Comfreyfan]

Well I'm still snipping off blighty leaves and stems, although some of the main stems are very black now But tomatoes are still growing - I bring them indoors as soon as they start to colour, a few have obviously been infected with blight but most of them have ripened fine. Won't be a huge harvest from my 16 plants, but more than we can eat, so still some for the freezer. Still waiting for my first green zebra or black krim - fingers crossed they start to ripen before the blight gets them!

[StephenH]

Well, that more or less confirms that what my 'Amish Paste' toms fell victim to was blight. Bugger. I'll clear the bed as thoroughly as possible, and not grow toms or spuds there for as long as possible.

[tiachica]

My turn now... is this the beginnings of blight?

After the wet weather all day today, this is what I found:

[RedThorn]

Well I've been lucky so far, but looked tonight and been hit on 3 of the tom plants with blight pulled them out in the hope that I'll save the rest but will have to see....

[Queen bee]

We also have had good results with Sarpo Mira . All other spuds affected by blight, not those though. I also think we will avoid planting tomatoes in the tunnell again for a few years.

[WeeGarden]

I think I may have been a bit too drastic in pulling up my plants. Whilst I dithered about what to do with them, the heap of toms I was left with started to go red. I stuck some bananas on top of them and now 90% of them are red. I also gave half of my toms to a Romanian lady at work who said she could pickle them.

I wish I'd left them on the plant now, and pulled the leaves off as and when the blight took hold. It looks like that very few if any of the toms were themselves affected at the point I culled the plants.

I also wish I'd never given any away now! D'oh!

It's really hard to know what to do. Some years, the whole plant will succumb in a couple of days. This year, my friend has been having red toms from her blighted plants.

[BarleySugar]

Mine at the allotment were fine one week, then 5 days later even some of the fruit showed signs of blight. I picked the lot and got rid of the plants on Thursday. I didn't have time to do anything with the fruit until yesterday, and by the time I got to it there were another 10 tomatoes showing signs. There's no way they would have ripened. As I didn't want to be making chutney just then I've cut them up and put them in the freezer. At least that way they won't go to waste. 3.5kg from 3 plants , and they were DD's favourite yellow ones too.
It's so hard to know just what to do, but blight can move so fast, and it hasn't even been wet here. The ground is crying out for rain, although the days have been quite overcast.

[SarzWix]

I don't think it has to be actually wet, just above a certain percentage humidity and above a minimum temperature for 2 consecutive days. A bit of a breeze will move the spores around

[SarzWix]

Moving thread to the top for the new season...

[SarzWix]

A great new fact sheet on blight from The Potato Council: http://www.potato.org.uk/media_files..._blight_v5.pdf

Having just checked their websites (Blightwatch.co.uk - the essential service for professional potato growers and Fight Against Blight 2010 ) I can see that so far this year there's only been one confirmed blight case, and one suspected, in the whole country, which is a much better picture than this time last year.

[poppyfield]

Tomato Blight???

Can anyone help? My tomato leaves have suddenly gone a strange purple colour and have started to curl, (images attached) and when I pulled off a tomato today the skin had split and it was a bit black. I have looked on the web and in my book of plant diseases and the images don't seem to match my plants. I have been feeding them once a week (been trying to remember same day each week but failing a bit!!) and have lots of green tomato's just waiting to ripen. I know that blight seems to be more prevalent in warm wet weather which it has been recently. Just got my fingers crossed I can save them?