Talk to me about early blight on tomatoes, please.

[Beth_B]

For the first time ever, I've been struck by early blight. The roma tomatoes are gone - pulled out and in the trash. Several other varieties are affected. Neem oil wasn't doing much so I bought a commercial copper fungicide and have been aggressively removing all affected leaves and spraying the plants and soil.
Nothing much more I can do at this point, right?

So for next year, how do I anticipate and deal with the problem? I already rotate plants and water sparingly and just at the base and the tomatoes are almost all staked and off the ground. But the fungus will remain in the soil until next year, is this correct? Do I need to replace all the growing medium? I am growing in both straw bales and soil. Or just forgo tomatoes completely next year? Pre-treat soil in spring with the copper fungicide prior to planting and periodically throughout the growing season?

Any tips greatly welcomed. It doesn't look like I'm going to have a great year for tomatoes and that makes me sad.

 

[Chuck]

For the first time ever, I've been struck by early blight. The roma tomatoes are gone - pulled out and in the trash. Several other varieties are affected. Neem oil wasn't doing much so I bought a commercial copper fungicide and have been aggressively removing all affected leaves and spraying the plants and soil.
Nothing much more I can do at this point, right?

So for next year, how do I anticipate and deal with the problem? I already rotate plants and water sparingly and just at the base and the tomatoes are almost all staked and off the ground. But the fungus will remain in the soil until next year, is this correct? Do I need to replace all the growing medium? I am growing in both straw bales and soil. Or just forgo tomatoes completely next year? Pre-treat soil in spring with the copper fungicide prior to planting and periodically throughout the growing season?

Any tips greatly welcomed. It doesn't look like I'm going to have a great year for tomatoes and that makes me sad.

Welcome to the club. Here is my take on EB. EB is basically a soil born fungus that attacks the lower leaves and works its way to the top. Some varieties of tomatoes are more susceptible than others. Once you have EB you have it and not too much can be done, but, you can work around it and have a good crop. There are a few things you can do to greatly slow it down. The first thing is to heavily mulch the plants. This prevents rain from splashing the soil up onto the leaves and thus reduces the fungal spores from getting on the plant. Another thing I have found to be effective is to start a spray regimen of liquid seaweed and molasses as soon as you transplant them into the garden. Somehow the seaweed makes the outer layer of the leaves thicker and tougher and less susceptible to the fungus. It also helps to stop spider mites if you are unlucky enough to have them too. Another thing that greatly helps is to use compost tea as a foliar spray when the plants start to show blooms...What I have done in the past 3 seasons is to prune the lower limbs off so as to effectively raise the canopy of the plant away from soil level. Not the suckers, just the limbs. The suckers will grow up whereas the limbs grow down. This not only makes it difficult for the spores to get on the plant it also helps a lot with air circulation. Having done all of the above I still get EB but I have saved the plant long enough to have a good crop. Where I live it gets so hot so early that tomatoes stop setting fruit about the first of June and they are all ripe by the middle of July. I still have a few tomatoes left, not many though but I had a great crop. EB seems to really get bad here the hotter it gets but it normally starts showing when the first fruits are almost full size and still dark green. After EB is showing, prune of the affected limbs and get the pruned limbs out of your garden and keep you shears disinfected with alcohol when used plant to plant. I forgot mention earlier in this post that if you sprinkle whole ground cornmeal (horticutural cornmeal) around the base of the plant before you mulch and keep it sprinkled afterward, that this also GREATLY reduces the severity of EB.

 

[Beth_B]

Thanks so much, Chuck! You're a wealth of wisdom, sir. This is great information and glad to hear I'm not going to lose all my tomatoes this year if I stay on top of this. Year before last late blight attacked two tomato plants - both cherry variety and both in large containers - but weirdly enough, although all the leaves pretty much died the production of fruit was amazing right up until frost. I had two towering plants with no leaves but pounds of cherry tomatoes.
OK, so more lower-limb pruning I can do right away (actually I have been doing it since those are the leaves affected first and foremost by the blight.) We are entering our third warm and very rainy growing season in a row and I suspect I introduced the fungus with some new plants this spring, or it blew in from elsewhere and the wet weather seriously has not helped.
I have compost tea and have added it to the growing medium but not to the foliage, I can do that right away too. I have quite a few blossoms and some fairly vigorous unripe tomatoes so far, but production is down and the romas were getting lesions on the fruit so I just removed them completely. Here it's not until mid-late July and early August when we start getting good production. Depending on the plant and variety.
I have read your molasses thread and can get that no problem - where do you find liquid seaweed? I guess I can google that. I'll also need to look up horticultural cornmeal; I have never heard of that.
One question, if I may: what mulch is good? I have some mulch left from last year's limb-trimming but it's maybe 100 feet away from the vegetables so I am guessing it could easily be affected by the fungus. Should I just go to a garden center and buy some brand-new bark mulch? Or straw? Or something else?

 

[Chuck]

Thanks so much, Chuck! You're a wealth of wisdom, sir. This is great information and glad to hear I'm not going to lose all my tomatoes this year if I stay on top of this. Year before last late blight attacked two tomato plants - both cherry variety and both in large containers - but weirdly enough, although all the leaves pretty much died the production of fruit was amazing right up until frost. I had two towering plants with no leaves but pounds of cherry tomatoes.
OK, so more lower-limb pruning I can do right away (actually I have been doing it since those are the leaves affected first and foremost by the blight.) We are entering our third warm and very rainy growing season in a row and I suspect I introduced the fungus with some new plants this spring, or it blew in from elsewhere and the wet weather seriously has not helped.
I have compost tea and have added it to the growing medium but not to the foliage, I can do that right away too. I have quite a few blossoms and some fairly vigorous unripe tomatoes so far, but production is down and the romas were getting lesions on the fruit so I just removed them completely. Here it's not until mid-late July and early August when we start getting good production. Depending on the plant and variety.
I have read your molasses thread and can get that no problem - where do you find liquid seaweed? I guess I can google that. I'll also need to look up horticultural cornmeal; I have never heard of that.
One question, if I may: what mulch is good? I have some mulch left from last year's limb-trimming but it's maybe 100 feet away from the vegetables so I am guessing it could easily be affected by the fungus. Should I just go to a garden center and buy some brand-new bark mulch? Or straw? Or something else?

The very best mulch is from ground up LOCAL materials. Stay away from bark mulches from who knows where. You can find whole ground or horticultural cornmeal at a Whole Foods grocery store but it is too expensive to buy although it does make the worlds best cornbread. Buy it a feed store for cattle, horses, chickens etc. It will come in 25 - 40 lb bag. That seems like a lot but it isn't. PM me for info on cornmeal. Liquid seaweed is available as either liquid seaweed or liquid kelp and any real nursery will have it in stock or can obtain it. One of the major suppliers is Monterrey. It is all over the internet.

From my long experience in gardening and experience with Early Blight I am convinced that it is inherent in the soil and climate conditions allow it to come forth, so to speak, in certain weather related conditions. During the past 50+ years, sometimes it is terrible and sometimes non- existent, all in the same garden, but I have found with the aforementioned actions that it is controllable even in the worst infections.

 

[Beth_B]

Good point. There are several excellent non-chain garden centers here and the one I mostly go to has their own line of soils, compost and perhaps mulch as well. I assume they have the seaweed fertilizer and I'll ask about the cornmeal - I've been reading up on this online and I had no idea! I'm calling Wojos today to see if they carry cornmeal too. If not there's Tractor Supply and a couple of independent farm supply stores. Whole Foods is about 50 miles away and any time I go in there I spend too much money.

The "fungus among us"...I guess it makes sense that along with all the beneficial microorganisms in the soil, there are some nasties.

Thanks again, Chuck, I'm not feeling so much like my garden is doomed now!

 

[Chuck]

Good point. There are several excellent non-chain garden centers here and the one I mostly go to has their own line of soils, compost and perhaps mulch as well. I assume they have the seaweed fertilizer and I'll ask about the cornmeal - I've been reading up on this online and I had no idea! I'm calling Wojos today to see if they carry cornmeal too. If not there's Tractor Supply and a couple of independent farm supply stores. Whole Foods is about 50 miles away and any time I go in there I spend too much money.

The "fungus among us"...I guess it makes sense that along with all the beneficial microorganisms in the soil, there are some nasties.

Thanks again, Chuck, I'm not feeling so much like my garden is doomed now!

Just don't let them talk you into buying Corn Gluten Meal