Sorry about the speck. It's one of the minor diseases, if that's any consolation -- it doesn't kill the plant, it goes away with warmer weather, and its impact is usually minor. There are much worse things you could be dealing with. :) 1. Remove the fruit if they seem to be stunted or you really can't stand their appearance. Otherwise, you can leave them on. 2. To my knowledge, speck doesn't affect flavor, nor the natural ripening process. The specks are unsightly and a little hard, but still edible. 3. Hot dry weather should stop its spread, yes. The affected leaves and fruit will still have the specks on them, but you won't get any new infections, so long as you don't water by overhead sprinkle (at least in the evening). If you must water by overhead sprinkler, do so in the morning, so that the plants can dry out quickly. Improving airflow through the plants may help as well. 4. If you remove as much crop debris as you can and turn the rest under, you should be able to minimize problems next year by mulching as soon as you put the plants in the ground (peppers as well as tomatoes). The bacteria reside in the soil and infect the leaves by soil splash; mulching softens the impact of water droplets, and provides a clean surface below the plant. The more you do to control it, the better it'll get over time. You can never fully get rid of it in the soil, though. If you save seed, make sure it's properly fermented, to make sure there's no bacteria on it. Fermentation for 4-5 days is sufficient. 5. There's no need to treat the wire cages, since the bacteria overwinter in soil. If you're concerned, though, you can wash all the soil off them before storing, and even spritz them down with a dilute bleach solution to make sure. Infection from the cages would be pretty unlikely even without that, though. I hope that helps... you should be able to get lots of good tomatoes still, even without the (still tasty) specked ones. --Alison

Again Seysson, your opinion ONLY on no so called black Tomatoes, which I refer to as red/blacks if they have a yellow epidermis, such as Carbon or Black Krim and pink blacks if they have a clear epidermis such as Cherokee Purple or Indian Stripe or Black From Tula. to. What is purple? No consensus on that at all, and it's more important these days with many varieties having antho shoulders or spots. The word purple was used up until perhaps the 30's to indicate a PINK tomato, so that unt Ginny's Purple, is pink for instance. Very few varieties dohave a bit of true purple and Orange Smudge and Red fleshed Orange Smudge are examples. You listedabove a Purple Heart and the Only true Purple Heart I know of was via the breeding efforts of someone in Germany whom I know well, who just released a purple, a green and chocolate heart, no, he doesn't sell seeds, and I was sent the seeds and they are being grown out this summer by my seed producers for my next seed offer elsewhere. But you said Purple Heart (DWF) and for those who don't know what that means, it was one bred by members of the Dwarf Project at another site. And here is a link to the one you are growing and if you look at the parentage it might or might not make sense in calling it Purple Heart Carolyn, who knows how much you miss me, oh well, I do stop by, but infrequently, and almost never post now.

I'm not finding photos of necrotic blight, but other blights show darker spots with a circular pattern not seen on my leaves. Also my fruit is unaffected. Septoria Leaf Spot sounds and looks similar to what mine have. Either way, the treatment is removal of affected leaves and a copper spray. I will do both as well as a preventative spray on my other tomatoes. Thanks, Omni.

Amy, The use of a milk spray requires strong sunlight? I've never sprayed milk in my garden and likely never will. I am not a huge fan of homemade concoctions because I have seen so many people damage plants with them. I pretty much completely avoid them, other than the use of compost tea for about a decade, and I don't even spray it on plant foliage any more. I still sometimes use it as a soil drench. With synthetic preventive fungicides like cholorothalonil, users are advised to avoid spraying in strong sunlight and hot conditions, so I always spray during the coolest part of the day, generally when it is cloudy, and often just a few hours before rain is expected to fall. While they advise that we avoid spraying in hot, sunny conditions, they do not define "hot", so I just try to spray either first thing in the day just as the sun has come up, or on a cloudy day when the weather is relatively cool, or in the evening when sunset is not too far away and my garden already is largely shaded and cool. I've only used chlorothalonil a very limited number of times and only in very recent years, but I've not had any issues with it burning plant foliage. Based on a lifetime of experience in spraying various (mostly organic) things in/on my garden, I never spray in sunshine when the temperatures are at 80 degrees or higher---I either wait for a cloudy day, or spray in the coolest part of the day when there is no direct sunlight hitting the plants. So far, that method has served me well. Hazel, There are three kinds of fungicides available to a gardener: organic, synthetic preventives like chlorothalonil that are NOT systemic, and stronger fungicides that ARE systemic. This is an important distinction. 1. Organic types. Organic fungicides are widely believed to be safer for the plants. I do not doubt that in some way this is true, but what I have found through trying to use them on solanum family plants for Early Blight and for Alternaria Canker is that the organic ones are not very effective. As a person who tries to garden in the most natural, most organic and most sustainable way possible, it pains me greatly to say that, but it is the truth as I have observed it in my garden. If the organic fungicides were superior, I'd use them. If they worked well at all, I'd use them. I just haven't found that they are very good at preventing or controlling the two diseases that tend to hit my tomato plants every year, so if they don't work, what's the point in using them? A totally organic approach is great if it works, but not great if you let the same disease hit and kill your plants every year because you won't use an effective method to stop that disease. Because the organic fungicides are not very effective, they must be sprayed much more often than the synthetic preventive fungicides. The more often that you spray, the more likely you are to burn or otherwise damage plant tissue. So, I finally wised up and decided it was better for my garden if I decided to move on from the organic fungicide and use something that actually would work. It was either that, or sit by each year and watch as Early Blight hit and destroyed a garden full of beautiful, productive tomato plants. There just didn't seem to be any point to me in spraying organic fungicides that were ineffective, especially if I had to spray them more often. You know that I hate spraying. So, rather than spraying an ineffective organic fungicide, for very many years I sprayed nothing and just let the Early Blight decimate my plants for far too many years. Well, I'm through with that approach too. What good is an organic garden if diseases impact it to the point that the tomatoes don't produce? So, I moved on from the organic fungicides to the next category. 2. Synthetic preventive fungicides that are not systemic in nature. I think the word that the scientists use for these types of fungicides is "protectant". These types of fungicides work by coating the foliage, thereby not allowing the disease microorganisms to attach to the plants and infect them. The plants do not absorb these protectant fungicides into their tissue (which is how they differ from systemic types) and in order to avoid eating the fungicide, all you have to do is thoroughly wash your harvest before eating because the fungicide stays on the surface of the plant and all its parts. (This is assuming you follow all the directions on the packaging of your fungicide....for example, with some products they tell you that you must spray a certain numbers of days before harvesting. Guidelines like that should always be followed.) These protectants are most effective if used from the very first day plants go into the ground. Because I prefer to eat food from plants that have not been sprayed, I've never actually tried this approach because I want to keep the amount of spraying I do to a bare minimum. What I will do is go ahead and put my plants in the ground, and then at the first sign of Early Blight, I strip the infected foliage off each and every plant and then spray the plants with the protectant fungicide. If I have caught the disease early, I often only have to remove diseased foliage from a few plants. This is a somewhat less than perfect approach because it means the disease is already present before I ever spray. I understand that, but it makes me happier to spray as little as possible so I don't spray from Day 1. I generally don't spray until Early Blight shows up, and that can be anywhere from late April to mid June. Given that I put plants in the ground in mid- to late-March, and our season runs for many months, I choose not to spray from Day 1 because I want to use as little of the fungicide as possible. I've never sprayed chlorothalonil more than 3 times in one year. If I remember the label correctly, I think they recommend a maximum spraying routine for tomatoes of 7 sprays over the course of a season. If a person sprays every two weeks, at that rate they could use a fungicide for 14 weeks. I know people who spray a lot more often, though many of them are in cooler (and wetter) climates than ours, and they likely have less fear of the repeated use of fungicide sprays possibly damaging their plant foliage since they rarely if ever have to deal with the kind of extreme heat and sunlight we have here in the summer months. They also understand that spraying more often or more times overall is not recommended, and they know they are spraying at their own risk if they spray more times overall or more often than the label recommends. Most years I only spray a protectant fungicide once or twice and use it to slow down the spread of disease just long enough that I get my big June/early July harvest for canning. After I've canned a few hundred jars of tomato products, the diseases can just go ahead and have the plants if they still want them because by then I am sick of tomatoes. There are many different kinds of protectant fungicides. Some of them are recommended for tomatoes, while others might be recommended for fruit trees or ornamental plants. Because chlorothalonil is considered very good as a protectant against the disease that plagues my tomato plants, it is the one I've chosen to use. I haven't used the other synthetic types, so cannot really comment on any of them. Some of the other protectant fungicides available include Captan, Mancozeb and Thiram. I've never used any of them, other than occasionally purchasing seeds that were treated by the wholesaler or retailer with thiram. One key thing to remember about protectants is that diseases do not develop resistance to them, or at least that is how I understand it. Since the protectants are only serving as a barrier between the plant surface tissue and the disease, these diseases don't develop resistance in an effort to overcome the protectant. All that the diseases have to do to succeed is to find one tiny spot where you didn't spray the protectant on the plant foliage (and there's always going to be places that the spray misses), and they can overcome the protectant, so there's no reason for them to develop resistance. That's important. Finally, protectants only work by sticking to the plant surface. When washed into the soil, they degrade and break down. They do not harm the microbial life in the soil. 3. Synthetic fungicides that are systemic in nature. I've never used one of these, and I do not believe I ever will. Unfortunately, these are widely used in commercial agriculture and have been in use since the 1960s. Systemic products are absorbed into the plants and work by moving through the plants' vascular systems to offer protection to every plant part. Unfortunately, once they are in the plant, that means they are in the part of the plant we eat. That's why I won't use them. There are different kinds of systemics and some work differently from others, but the thing to remember is they absorb into the plant and become a part of it. It is interesting that some research may show that the systemic fungicides harm some of the biological life in the soil, but other research may show that the use of some system fungicides actually increase the mycorrhizal infection of plants. This ought to be considered a good thing, I suppose, as the mycorrhizae fungi are beneficial fungi that live in the soil and normally infect your plants but do so in order to help the plants take up nutrients in the soil. I do not know which systemics cause more mycorrhizal infection versus which systemics cause less, but if I were using a systemic, I suppose I would want the one that stimulates more. Systemic fungicides often are favored by growers for several reasons, including the fact that they have some degree of curative ability, while non-systemics are not curative, only protectant. Also, many systemics provide a longer period of protection than the protectants do, so they can be applied less often. The most important thing to know about using a systemic fungicide (other than the fact it is absorbed into the plant and remains there) is that diseases will and do develop a resistance to these types of fungicides, giving rise eventually to fungicide-resistant fungi. Thus, if using this type it is very important to always select 2 or 3 of them to use in rotation in an effort to prevent resistance from developing in the first place. I suppose I've never looked for these products on store shelves, so have no idea if they are readily available to a home gardener, but am familiar with a couple of the names and do know some people who use them either on their farms or in their home or market gardens. Among the types of systemic fungicides available are benomyl, myclobutanil and tebuconazole. So, that's pretty much everything I know about fungicides. And, I'll add, that it is my understanding that some systemics are not labeled for use on edible plants, so anyone who chooses to use this type must be sure to buy one labeled for use on whatever sort of plant they're intending to spray with it. There are other ways to somewhat control fungal infections in a garden. It is helpful to always mulch the soil around plants, including adjacents pathways, to prevent rainfall from splashing onto the ground and carrying fungal spores (or bacteria, as far as that goes) up onto the plants as the raindrops bounce up off the ground. The thicker the mulch, the better. I try to start out with an inch of mulch at planting, and increase it over time up to 2-4", though the thicker mulch is more to keep the ground cool and moist than anything else. Also, fungal infections generally start low on the plants, on the leaves closest to the ground. So, as my tomato plants get bigger and bigger, I remove the very lowest leaves. Usually, by the time I see the first sign of Early Blight, I don't have any leaves that are close enough to the ground to touch the mulch or the soil if there wasn't any mulch there. Once you have disease-infected lower leaves, it is imperative to remove them because, if you don't, the disease microorganisms will spread more quickly, moving progressively upward from leaf to leaf. Because Early Blight and other similar fungal diseases can be found in many places...in the soil, in the air, and even in raindrops, it is almost impossible to raise tomato and other solanum family plants without having Early Blight appear at some point in the season. I know plenty of gardeners who have given up growing tomatoes because they have become so frustrated by having to deal with Early Blight. I'm just never going to give up growing tomatoes. So, you have to have a plan in place to deal with it, and in order for the plan to be effective, you must execute your plan consistently and ruthlessly. For too many years, I tried an organic approach that failed. Looking back, I wish I had started using a protectant synthetic `10 or 20 years earlier than I did. While I still favor gardening in the most organic, most sustainable and most natural way possible, I am a realist and readily acknowledge that there are some garden problems for which the organic world just does not have a good solution. Tomato disease is one of those areas where there are not necessarily good organic solutions. So, if the choice is to use a protectant synthetic fungicide that will hold the disease at bay and allow me to harvest all the tomatoes we want, that's the choice I am going to make. I am just tired of getting that sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach when I see the first signs of EB in my garden. I know exactly how much damage it can do and how much it can decrease the productivity of my plants. In some cases, your plants can even die. I find it unacceptable to sit there and do nothing and let my plants die, and I find that using ineffective organic methods that don't stop the EB from spreading is tantamount to doing nothing. So, I've changed my ways. And, I want to add this, while Early Blight and other similar diseases pop up virtually every year, I find that in drought years they are much less of a problem as long as I am watering in a way (like using soaker hoses or drip irrigation lines) that does not put water on the foliage. So, in drought years, you may see little to no Early Blight just because the weather conditions and your chosen watering techniques do not encourage its development and spread. I've never sprayed my tomato plants with any fungicide (organic or synthetic) in drought years because I don't have to. Hope this info helps. Dawn