Is It Blight?

[Penellype]

It is very strange. The tomatoes that I planted in the hotbed at my friend's house have got it. The ones she planted in pots about 3 feet away have not (yet).

[solanaceae]

Hi everyone

Something appeared on my potatoes about 4 days ago after the period of heavy rain.

Here is a pick from 4 days ago

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And here is how it looks today

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I also dug up one plant up and took a pic of the underside of it

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And the spuds underneath look not to bad just not very many of them and some wireworm damage by the looks of it.

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The variety is Maris Piper and they have only been growing about 3 months. Do you think its blight or something else?

Thanks

Definately the early stages of blight I'm afraid.

[ButternutSquash]

It is very strange. The tomatoes that I planted in the hotbed at my friend's house have got it. The ones she planted in pots about 3 feet away have not (yet).

Last year I had Sungold outdoors, and Maskotka outdoors. One of the latter was next to the Sungold. The Sungold were destroyed by blight, in mid september, the Maskotka had a few iffy leaves, but appeared to shrug it off. Maskotka is quite early, and hardy too.

This year my Sungold have some leaves that are a bit silvery underneath, and curling, I'm hoping it is just a reaction to cold nights. If it is blight, I will lose almost all the harvest this year.

[Penellype]

The ones that got blight for me were Chocolate Cherry (very bad), Belle (very bad) and Sungold (not very bad but clearly affected). The ones nearby that haven't got it are Moneymaker.

[solanaceae]

Interesting.

In my case I've found the tomato plant type has no significance in determining how likely it gets blight. The crucial factor seems to be where in the garden the plant is situated at.

[Penellype]

The layout of the garden at my friend's is interesting. The house is one of a small number of dwellings down a single track country road. The garden borders a field (containing horses), and I am not aware of any potatoes growing nearby although the land is generally arable. On the south side of the garden is the vegetable patch - there are 4 Bajaja tomato plants (bush variety) in there. They are showing no signs of blight. To the north of the vegetable patch is the hotbed in which the blighted tomatoes are growing, and to the west of this is a garage. Along the garage wall, about 3 feet from the hotbed, are pots of Moneymaker tomatoes, which have not got blight. It is literally only the 3 plants in the hotbed that had the blight, and they had it really badly. If the problem was damp shade I would have expected the shadier garage wall to have encouraged the blight, and the Moneymaker tomatoes there to have got it too.

I really have no idea how it got there - we have not had a Smith period here for about a month, and the hotbed was constructed from new gravel boards and filled with fresh horse manure (straight out of the stable) topped with bought compost. In contrast, the Bajaja plants were planted in an area of soil which had last year's old potato crop in it until March, when I took over the veg patch. If anything was going to get blight I would have put my money on the Bajaja!

Confused

[veggiechicken]

Some of my tomatoes went down with blight today - they looked so healthy when I took this photo a couple of days ago. They're in with the squash alongside the GH - south facing border, one of the sunnier spots in the garden.



I've stripped off all the green toms and soaked them in a Milton type sterilising solution - hope that will kill the blight spores. Made a pan of green tomato soup tonight, just in case !!
Hope it doesn't spread into the GH or to the other toms and potatoes at the other end of the garden.

[Martin H]

There were a few patches of blight on my outdoor toms today:



I'll be clearing the lot pronto and relying on the greenhouse ones which are okay so far.

I'm in the process of cutting off all the potato foliage as well. Luckily it's late enough in the season that I've got a decent crop waiting to be dug up.

[solanaceae]

Yes, same here. It's just the plants in the south facing, sunny area of the garden that are having the blight troubles. Every other area is just fine.

Perhaps the higher amount of sunshine in that area of the garden during the day means more heat is radiating away from the ground at night, leading to higher rates of humidity/condensation under the leaves/stems = ideal for blight.

If that's the case then I suppose the plants in the non-blighted areas of the garden should be fine for a good while yet, so long as there are no Smith Periods.

[Penellype]

Sorry to hear that VC and Martin. Its really odd that the blight should be showing now, when the nights are so chilly.

[Jonnyt]

Blight needs warmth in the past few weeks it's not been as warm which may explain why warmer plants have caught it?


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[Nicos]

If I recall correctly, it takes 2 weeks for the symptoms to show.

Very sorry for you all, but don't be too peeved off, some of us with 12 blighted plants had to chuck away the lot before they had even set fruit!

[veggiechicken]

I've stripped off all the green toms and soaked them in a Milton type sterilising solution - hope that will kill the blight spores. Made a pan of green tomato soup tonight, just in case !!

Despite Miltoning the green toms - they are turning brown and blighty. Best I take them off my bedroom windowsill before it spreads to me

[Penellype]

I think once the blight has got into the plant nothing will stop it. I once harvested about 200 green tomatoes with no signs of blight on the fruit, although the leaves and stems had it. I laid them out carefully on kitchen paper, not touching each other. By the next morning more than half had gone brown, and by the following day they were all useless.

[solanaceae]

I think once the blight has got into the plant nothing will stop it. I once harvested about 200 green tomatoes with no signs of blight on the fruit, although the leaves and stems had it. I laid them out carefully on kitchen paper, not touching each other. By the next morning more than half had gone brown, and by the following day they were all useless.

Not always true Penellype. Plants can recover, there is hope yet! Of course it all depends on how severely the plant has been affected.

This year I've had plants with several fruit that have become blighted and the main stem of the plant with brown patches on it. Luckily the infection had stopped dead in its tracks thanks to the pleasant daytime weather we had, and I'd treated the plant or cut off any infected material and disposed of it. Since then some of those plants have continued to grow healthily(on the whole) with plenty of uninfected ripe fruit.

On another note, had a look at the weather forecast (to be taken with a pinch of salt i know), but it doesn't look too good this week. Looks like it could be a washout for many areas with the threat lingering upto Friday.