New take on copper for blight

[frozenthunderbolt]

A friend of mine said that her father slides a piece of copper wire through the base of the stem of plats susceptible to blight and it works in the same way as a copper spray but is less messy and extravagant in the amount of copper used.

Anyone have any actual experience of using this method?

[Green Aura]

No, but do you think the inside of electric wiring would do the trick? I've got tons of it (slight exaggeration)

[Rosendula]

No, me neither. Whenever copper spray was mentioned on another forum I used to go on a bloke called farmerSteve used to come on and point out that it's poisonous and shouldn't be used on tomatoes.

aaaggghhhh, I've had tomato blight again this year, very upsetting. Had beautiful strong plants with tons of tomatoes and have only managed to save about 100 of them, all wrapped in paper in a drawer.

Now, I have been told by a french colleague that in France, they stick a plain copper wire through the stem of the plant when it is about 12 inch as this stops blight - and its the copper in the insecticides that help prevent it. Has anyone else heard of this and does it work? Obviously for next year now.


Message 2 - posted by farmerSteve (U2644680) , Sep 2, 2008
copper certainly helps to prevent blight but do you really want to poison yourself?

Isn't there a farmerSteve here somewhere???

[frozenthunderbolt]

Yep you could use wiring copper, but would have to sand the clear coat off it first.

I think the amount of copper ingested via wire would be minuscule compared to via spray. + we do need a little copper. . .

I'll try it i think, side be side plant from same seed, one with and one without. if it works I'll keep using it, maybe get the copper concentration in fruiting bodies checked out

[Fatima]

A friend of mine said that her father slides a piece of copper wire through the base of the stem of plats susceptible to blight and it works in the same way as a copper spray but is less messy and extravagant in the amount of copper used.

Anyone have any actual experience of using this method?

A lot of the French veggie growers use this method and it's very successful. After losing plants to blight last year I shall be trying it as well.

[Colin]

If you keep the soil ph above 6.5 and don`t expose it to an ammonia source it wont break down too fast.

[frozenthunderbolt]

Awesome! thanks for all the responses people, it is fantastic