UK Blight Alert: Help others to try and prevent it

[Millymollymandy]

Thanks Cheezy although I can't see really with those tiny photos. Is it just a plastic roof? Or down the sides too - in which case how do you get in and tie them in to the canes or pinch them out?

Mine are in pots 3 times that size (and the roots always fill them up completely!) but they still fall over in the wind. I rig two or three together with a cross pole but the downside of that is that I can't turn the pot around to face the sun when the toms on the 'wrong' side need to ripen!

[Cheezy]

Hi 3M

It's just a roof, I'm trying to just keep off the rain.

[Millymollymandy]

Doesn't the rain come at them from the sides though? Or is it that sheltered that your rain only falls down vertically?

I'm afraid ours comes from all directions, often horizontally!

Anyway we are still working on a PLAN for some kind of shelter for next year.

[red]

blight on my spuds here now....greenhouse tomatoes ok so far.. but i water with rainwater.. so....

spuds seem ok - cut the tops off and got rid now have to dig them all up...

[Millymollymandy]

I have it on my toms in pots now so they have been blasted with B. Mix (never mind the blue toms this time!) and also the cucumbers and melons. It's all the same disease (called mildiou) in France and B. Mix is the cure (ha ha) according to my gardening magazine. Funny really cos it's the same magazine that was telling me a couple of months ago that milk/water was the cure for mildew on cuc and melons. Tried that on the roses and it doesn't work at all.

[Peggy Sue]

Ok I ahve a confession to make, I don't really know what blight looks like as I've never had it

However, what looked like Magnesium deficiency has turned into brown blotches on some leaves. I've whipped them off but it seems to me each day I have a few more...am I doomed?

[Millymollymandy]

PS google it and look at images - there will be tons of photos of what it looks like, I assure you! turn the leaf over and does it have a mouldy looking white ring around the brown bit? I'm picking off leaves which are both blighted and just suspect at the moment, and mine have the m. deficiency as well so are all curled up and speckled browny yellow at the bottom.

I have to say with spraying twice with B. Mix the blight, whilst still there, is spreading MUCH more slowly than it normally would so seems (cross fingers!!!) controllable at the moment..... So thanks everyone for persuading me that blue splashed toms are better than no toms.

[Peggy Sue]

PS google it and look at images - there will be tons of photos of what it looks like, I assure you! turn the leaf over and does it have a mouldy looking white ring around the brown bit? I'm picking off leaves which are both blighted and just suspect at the moment, and mine have the m. deficiency as well so are all curled up and speckled browny yellow at the bottom.

I have to say with spraying twice with B. Mix the blight, whilst still there, is spreading MUCH more slowly than it normally would so seems (cross fingers!!!) controllable at the moment..... So thanks everyone for persuading me that blue splashed toms are better than no toms.

I've googled it but have only found a couple and they weren't very clear, plus an informative video, but I have no sound on my computer

Maybe I should be thinking blue tomatoes are better than no tomatoes.... I do love tomatoes

[Millymollymandy]

I've googled 'tomato blight leaves' and there are plenty. Here's a really good one:



and another - shows how it can affect the stems as well





You'd probably know if you'd got it as it spreads really fast!

[Peggy Sue]

Ah thanks, I tried to google 'blight' and got far less!

[Urban Ayisha]

anyone got a tried and tested green tomato chutney recipe? i will not let these flippin blighted tomatoes go to waste! grown from seed and everyfink!!!

[Peggy Sue]

I was still undecided if it was actually blight or not so I took off all teh affected leaves (almost stripping most plants ) and decided if they didn't recover I would ahve to decide on BM or whatever. I've fed them with seaweed, epson salts (as they also seemed to show Mg def earlier on, but unconvincingly), gave them all the treats I could think off- washed out milk bottles, veggie water daily, tried the marestail tea spray (a bit reluctantly as spraying the leaves is supposed to be a bad idea ).

Something seems to have worked, but I couldn't say what, or indeed for definite what the original problem was. I now have nice toms in the garden and plants that look really quite healthy. Wish I'd had the courgage to try one thing per growbag, but thats hard if you might lose the crop. Also wish I'd taken piccies of the saga.

Still amazed it struck the garden toms that are fed, watered, trained, etc, not the allotment ones that were basically left wild and overcrowded.