Here is something you might find interesting... My garden had plenty of early and late blight and septoria leaf spot. The following year I installed a hoop house over half of it and planted tomato plants inside and out (8 in/10 out). I sprayed/coated the outside plants several times (during wet periods) with a well known product used to control these diseases. The inside plants were treated only once (lower leaves only). Soil was the same inside and out (top quality and ammended-well with organic compost). The plants in the hoop made it all the way to freeze disease free! No blight at all inside. The outside plants, well, they were pretty much toast about 45 days earlier. The hoop house makes it sooooo much easier to garden. Never had to worry about pruning wet foliage (as it was often wet outside from the morning dew and rainstorms). The hoop house was not sealed off. It was about 50% open (no side or end walls). The plastic on top kept the direct rain off but there was some splashing along the sides. (I use leaf mulch to keep the soil from splashing up the stems). I can go on-an-on about the benefits of the hoop house but perhaps best is the reduction in plant disease. (but gardening during thunderstorms is pretty cool too!) My overall production was up more than 50%. And I suspect that with the dry and sunny conditions inside the hoop structure this winter (off-season), the bacteria and molds won't stand a chance (but I will still rotate anyway). One note, I trained my tomato plants to a rope attached to the top of the hoops. It grew vine-like plants vs. bushy plants you get on cages. It keeps the foliage drier and blight at bay. I am now less concerned about growing heirloom varieties. I hope I didn't get off topic.

Improving drainage can reduce the incidence of root rots or soil-borne fungal problems but many other fungal issues are more related to climate, humidity and siting. And some are just plain tough to avoid :-) If you have issues with fungal diseases or suspect that you might, you need prevention ahead of any symptoms......most fungicides - organic or not - are prophylactic, that is preventative only, not curative. Copper sulfur, aka Bordeaux mix, IS an accepted organic control. Corn gluten meal is an alternate choice for some fungal diseases but not very effective with regards to foliar problems. Try the Cornell or baking soda formulation or diluted milk. Both change the surface pH of the foliage, making it inhospitable to fungal spores. My fungicide of choice for most common problems is Neem oil. And it is an effective insecticide as well.

cactus, lol. I'm not drawn to those kinds of movies, but did like the Birds way back when. I have enough blobby stuff to deal with, remember my first encounter with a jellyfish, thought they were cool, none "bonded with me". buford, I knew just what I was going to see heh. Stinkhorn. Only once in the almost 40 years I've lived here have I had that, and it is gross, too. Yours is especially gross, they seem to vary. Mine was more slender and erectile, but I'm usually curious about anomalies in nature. Oh yes, the owls. Well I was relieved I had just the one encounter this year. They are adorable, quite docile when they get used to you, and a worry. One ornery one got in the street last year. It was like a circus around here for a few days, lotsa photos, it's pitiful watching them maintain a vigil in a bush where you have put them to keep them off the ground waiting for their parents to come, and the wildlife people won't let you feed them. I just love the sound of them, usually at night. We have a lot, barred owls, not on the endangered species list. This isn't the one I won on but is a nice closeup, was down on my stomach to get it, the one I won on is offloaded to my external hd. Have won quite a bit now, one on a baby chickadee, had never seen a baby one in my life. Right now one of my pelican shots is in a new magazine. I need to get back to photography, this gardening has me flumoxxed right now, trying to do too much.

apple, I still say it isn't Fusarium. Fusarium does not cause fruit symptoms while certain of the foliage diseases do. Fusarium causes profound wilting of plants, which you haven't mentioned, while foliage diseases never do. The fact that your VF varieties did not do better, and the VF doesn't mean total resistance, it means increased tolerance, also tells me that it probably wasn't Fusarium or Verticillium. All NEW foliage infections are acquired by airborne means, while splashback infection can and does occur when the soil has been contaminated in previous years by spores/'bacteria, depending on which specific foliage diseases are at work. In addition, as I said above, Fusarium is only a problem where the gound doesn't freeze in the winter. And the lower branches are affected first when it's splashback reinfection. You haven't described any specific lesions on the leaves and it's those spots that can help diagnose what foliage infections you might be dealing with, thus give you some idea of how you might go about preventing those diseases. The four most common ones are: Early Blight ( A. solani) Septoria Leaf Spot Bacterial Speck Bacterial Spot Early Blight can appear either early or late in the season. While pictures are static and disease is progressive, you might want to take a look at some pictures of the above four to see if you can make any matches. it's important b'c there is excellent prevention and control for the first two, which are fungal, but not for the last two, which are bacterial. Hope that helps. Carolyn