I Think it's blight, not sure. Should I just pick it all?

[Islay]

I've been away for the weekend, and just come back to find one of my four tomato plants looking a bit sad. Initially thought it needed a bit of water, but I've just noticed that a couple of the tomatoes are rotting as well, so assume it's blight.

Should I pick all the toms from this plant (mostly green, a few ripe ones), and can I risk leaving my other plants alone, or should I pick them too? All of the plants have loads and loads of green toms on, some have a few nearly ripe ones. The nearest tom plant is about 2m away, then there's two more about 3m further along the wall. Very sheltered garden. I would love to leave the others to ripen, but I'd rather make a load of green tomato chutney than risk losing the lot.

Any advice?

[Millymollymandy]

Like discussed on all the other blight threads you can either spray straight away with B. Mix, pick them all and leave on a sunny windowsill to ripen or make green tom chutney! If it is blight it will spread to the other plants very quickly.

[red]

yeh pick the tomatoes.. they might go manky anyway, but you can try. remove and dispose of the plant. pick any manky leaves off the others - with clean hands!! and hope you get a few more tomatoes before the rest go down with it.

[thesunflowergal]

I have picked all of my toms now, for the same reason. Once I have had a quick sit down (as I am so tired), I will be turning 3.5kg of green toms into chutney. I have about 1kg of red toms to turn into something aswell. I was pretty gutted as this is pretty much all that we got from 18 plants, a lot got binned as they where rotten.

Good Luck

[clare]

It's so disheartening when blight comes,ours are ok at the moment but I keep picking and thinking my day could come,my potatoes got it but the toms are in the greenhouse so fingers crossed. We didn't escape last year so I am busy freezing and cooking pasta sauce this year while I can.

[Islay]

I've picked all the toms off the manky plant, as it was definitely spreading, and with as few plants as I've got, I wasn't about to go and splash out on sprays. However, the other 3 seem intact, so I'm hoping for a few more ripe toms before it attacks!

[Millymollymandy]

I ended up picking all the toms off my two Gardeners' Delight plants as they or rather the canes supporting them collapsed yesterday - they've got 2 canes in each huge pot and braced together , but it was really windy. Rather than try to restake them up when they were dangling and drooping all over the place and being blown around by the wind I just thought Oh Sod It and cut the trusses off. Saves watering and I'm running out of rainwater!

[Peggy Sue]

My trouble is I simply love g.d. straight off the plant still warm from sunshine, the window sill ones never taste the same somehow.

I read you can make a spray from soaked marestail, so I gave it a go on the ones at home. I'm not at all convinced it was blight but they have picked up beautifully.

The allotment ones WERE looking great but overgrown, so I stripped the leaves for air, breathed a sigh of relief they had survivied and continued to ignore them! However blight hit the other end of the allotment about 10 days ago, and then a week later it was clearly blight on my patch nearest the edge.

I got the marestail spray on them and have been stripping bad bits off. Considering they are so close together it hasn't spread as quickly as I thought it would, the ones at the other end of the fenceline still (as of 24 hours ago) show no signs so I'm picking the ripe ones as I go and crossing my fingers.

At some point I will have to pick the lot.... it's choosing the time and I suffer from eternal optimism.

Ofcourse if I do pick the lot I plan to ripen in the windowsill...but that means bringing them home, and I am worried about my plants at home then becoming infected. I've a feeling that tonigth may be the night, it rained yesterday so I will just have to take my chances with that (Just had a thought I have a mini growhouse they could go in which is isolated or the windowsill at work- but I will most definitely eat them all as they become ripe)

My big plans were for pasta sauce, I suppose they will be medium to small plans now

[Ron and Jean]

I am having the same dilemma, I am sure there is blight in the greenhouse and it has been slowly spreading for a couple of weeks. I can't bring myself to pick all the green tomato's as they are so much nicer when they ripen on the plant. I feel it is a race between blight spreading and tomato's ripening.....

I too suffer from eternal optimism, and tikka made from fresh tomato's tonight was delicious for tea.

[Peggy Sue]

As this is my first blight experience I'm surprised to find it is spreading so slowly. There have been definite signs for at least 2 weeks down teh allotment, only a handful of fruit have been affected from about 50 plants.

All I've done (in my optimism) is strip affected leaves and spray with maretail that has been soaked in water every few days.

Judging from others experiences they should all be dead plants by now and some don't even show any signs. So does the leaf stripping and/or the old wives tale of mares tail spray actaully work? Or am I lucky, maybe because we are in the driest place in the country? or will they all suddenly drop dead tomorrow?

I have had to compost the blighted stuff as it's been way too windy to burn and it's beside a road. I hope the ample horse manure will build up enough heat?

[Millymollymandy]

Peggy Sue - could be the mares tail. I was reading about that in my french gardening magazine and I 'think' it was blight they were mentioning that it was good for.

Of all the teas/sprays they talk about in my magazine (nettle, comfrey and mares tail) of course the only one I've got (well apart from the one solitary little comfrey ) is nettles. But I'm going to plant some nettle leaves at the bottom of the pots next year before I put my toms in as that's another tip for growing sturdier, more resistant toms, apparently. Worth a try!

Dryness hasn't got anything to do with it as I've mentioned before it came to us the first year in a drought with not a drop of rain seen in weeks. It can stay in the soil and there are those who say it comes on the wind rather than with rain.

[Peggy Sue]

Peggy Sue - could be the mares tail. I was reading about that in my french gardening magazine and I 'think' it was blight they were mentioning that it was good for.

Of all the teas/sprays they talk about in my magazine (nettle, comfrey and mares tail) of course the only one I've got (well apart from the one solitary little comfrey ) is nettles. But I'm going to plant some nettle leaves at the bottom of the pots next year before I put my toms in as that's another tip for growing sturdier, more resistant toms, apparently. Worth a try!

Dryness hasn't got anything to do with it as I've mentioned before it came to us the first year in a drought with not a drop of rain seen in weeks. It can stay in the soil and there are those who say it comes on the wind rather than with rain.

Ah I shall definitely try the nettle thing, no shortage of those here (the downside of using horse manure!) BTW nettles thrive in manure so if you want a patch/pot of them you know what to do

I only read about the marestail a few weeks back, thought it was on 'ish' somewhere. Whatever you do don't plant yourself any marestail
the roots go down the Australia and you'll never be rid of it! However for once I'm glad I ahve some (in fact PLENTY- if you like I'll post you some )

Maybe I should do an experiment next year?

It is a funny feeling spraying toms when you know actually that could make it worse in theory.

I do still wonder if we are not too bad an area for it somehow, I hear other allotmenteers saying it will only get the leaves don't worry- obviously not your experience!

[Millymollymandy]

No thanks I don't think I want to introduce it, although I must admit it does look very pretty! I just googled it in French and I've found it help control the same sort of things as Bordeaux Mix - in which case why aren't there more (or any!) commercial mixes of this available?

[Peggy Sue]

I just googled it in French and I've found it help control the same sort of things as Bordeaux Mix - in which case why aren't there more (or any!) commercial mixes of this available?

Because it's free? Doesn't help the likes of Dow make their millions!

[Millymollymandy]

No, but it wouldn't be free to those who don't have it and buy it from the garden centre. They sell nettle tea/spray/whatever you call it here for lazy gardeners or those who don't have any access to nettles (I suppose for those who live in big towns or cities). So why not mare's tail?