Yep- Hit them with it even before they hit the ground. SPRAY,SPRAY,SPRAY,SPRAY,SPRAY,SPRAY, w/dacinol

Cornmeal works good too

Look to your local extension service on sound advice in this matter. They can offer you some predictors of disease since many diseases are weather related. Many can be forcast by outbreaks within your area.

Unwarranted preventtive spraying is becoming outdated with newer disease forcast technologies available. It can not only be costly but it will leave a residue on fruits that looks unsightly. Forget carrying the salt shaker with you to the garden after spraying.

Unwarranted????????? your opinion
Prefect example of

Realist vs treehugger

disease forcaster= another profession who can be wrong most of the time and still have a job. hahahalol!!!

Carolyn???????? we're waiting

Should I just starting spraying these things with a sulfur based fungicide as soon as I transplant them into the garden, and continue to spray every 2 weeks or so? Is that going to finally stop this problem? Or should I just quit growing tomatoes... :(

******

As long as you know that it's Early Blight ( A. solani) or Septoria Leaf Spot and not one of the bacterial foliage diseases I think if I were you that I'd start spraying with Ortho Garden Disease Control, aka Daconil, as soon as you put the plants out.

The directions for the spray schedule are on the bottle.

IMO Daconil is the best antifungal for tomato foliage pathogens and it's the most widely used antifungal in the world. The fact that you can spray up to the day of harvest tells you that it has low toxicity.

bmoser wrote:
Unwarranted preventtive spraying is becoming outdated with newer disease forcast technologies available. It can not only be costly but it will leave a residue on fruits that looks unsightly. Forget carrying the salt shaker with you to the garden after spraying.

In my area the Cornell Cooperative Extension does offer such service but it has not convinced the majority of commercial growers to rely on it exclusively.

Residues of anything sprayed are usually washed off by rain or deliberate watering and there's nothing wrong with gently washing the fruits.

Again, most of the folks who post here are backyard gardeners, not commercial as you say you are, so they can do things that a commercial farmer can't do.

But again, I don't see residues on the fruits as lasting that long re rain and watering/ It's actually part of the problem in having to reapply Daconil or whatever b'c of that. Ortho now makes a Daconil with spreader sticker which does help, and one can always buy spreader sticker separately and add it.

Carolyn

It might even be worthwhile to take off the diseased foliage now and start spraying. At least you could protect new foliage growth.

Daconil is best used, though as a preventative.

No doubt the soil where you've been growing you tomatoes is contaminated with pathogens shed in a previous year and so you can still get infections from what's called splashback infection. Again, Daconil can help.

But it's also good to know that all NEW folaige infections are acquired by airborne means.

Carolyn

Look to your local extension service on sound advice in this matter.

Maybe they give sound advice where you live. Here in southern California, it's like trying to climb over the Great Wall of China to get any advice from these people. They refer everything to their online-only master gardener program, who, from my experience, give lame 10 year out of date advice, and they only get it to you weeks later. Follow-up help takes many weeks. I envy you guys in states where you can turn to your extension services so easily.

Prefect example of

Realist vs treehugger

Woah, I thought comments like this, poor spelling and all, would have been left behind in the previous century.

If I wanted my produce covered in chemicals I'd save myself a lot of time and trouble and just buy them in the store.

Would it not make sense to figure out WHY the plants are diseased before blasting them with stuff? Perhaps taking a year off from tomatoes and working on improving the soil and trying to create a better balanced environment might actually help.

Nothing to do with tree hugging - it's just common sense. Why treat the disease if you could try to prevent it to begin with? Or does everyone in your town have sick tomatoes?

Doof--you have a computer with an internet hook up? It took me less than two minutes to find the UC IPM Online Tomato page. Extensions throughout the country are making a concerted effort to digitalize their informaton for you to access freely and immediately.

USAIN offers a set of links to extension and experiment station publications. You can find what you're looking for.

Here is a link that might be useful: USAIN ag links

Nothing to do with tree hugging - it's just common sense. Why treat the disease if you could try to prevent it to begin with? Or does everyone in your town have sick tomatoes?

Chris, that's exactly the point being made by many here... prevent it by using Daconil...

It's also been pointed out that any new infections were airborne...you can be 100% organic, with what you believe is great soil, and still get foliage diseases. And being in Ontario, you should be getting it any week now! (Well, I'd say by the middle or end of August, at least.)

Mark

Hmmm, so what does this foliage disease look like? Just so I can recognize it when it arrives. Must have skipped my back yard last year.
(I'm not being as sarcastic as I sound - the closest thing to fungus I've seen on my plants is powdery mildew)

Why are we going down the same tire old divisive path?

Chris, you can use the link below to learn about tomato problems.

T

Here is a link that might be useful: TAMU Tomato Problem Solver

Thanks for that link, Trudy - I've bookmarked it.

Hoosiercherokee - because not everyone has read every tired thread that's been posted here :)

Drtomato, I just thought you shold know that I'm probably standing on the same side of the fence as you but should point out the practicality of holding off on spraying even relatively safe products such as Chlorothalonil.

The residue doesn't come off as readily as Carolyn suggests. Last year I sprayed to halt a late summer Gray Mold outbreak. I found that I had to hand wipe almost every tomato aggressively for the following month and then there were still many missed areas of certain fruits that lead to numerous questions from people as to the identity of the pale residue. It certainly isn't good for business to be in that situation.

For the home gardener washing may be a mute issue. The salt shaker comment was meant as a metaphor but be advised that the daconil residue can be persistant enough to prevent you from showing off your tomato garden to neighbors or from readily sharing fresh picked fruits.

Carolyn wrote "As long as you know that it's Early Blight ( A. solani) or Septoria Leaf Spot and not one of the bacterial foliage diseases I think if I were you that I'd start spraying with Ortho Garden Disease Control, aka Daconil, as soon as you put the plants out." I'm in agreement there but that is a big "IF" because most home gardeners have little idea what Early Blight signs look like on the tomato plant as evident from numerous posts to this forum. Thus the suggestion to seek FREE help.

bmoser- I own a farm, a orchard (apple,pear), and live in a heavially forested area. My trees get regular sprayings of Imidian 70-w,Captan. I do know what it takes to keep my trees and garden disease and pest free in my area. If I didn't my hard work would be all for nothing. My garden has in past years been plagued with disease, so I do what I know works for me.

Posted by hoosiercherokee, July 25, 07 at 21:23 >> "Why are we going down the same tired old divisive path?"

Posted by chris_ont on Thursday, Jul 26, 07 at 0:01 >> "Hoosiercherokee - because not everyone has read
every tired thread that's been posted here :)"

For the benefit of those of you who haven't read every tired thread enumerating the pros and cons of Daconil use ...
Click Here for Englightenment

If after wading through that 38-post thread, you still hunger for more, Click Here

Meanwhile, I'm gonna enjoy a late breakfast of a turkey BLT made with a big, beautiful ol' homegrown tomato
from an unsprayed patch that has a few diseased, withering and dead plants that just couldn't hack it,
but still has plenty of verdant, healthy, productive plants with boatloads of tomatoes that don't have to be
scrubbed, rubbed or sudsed up with Dawn dish detergent to remove that sticky stanky film of Devil Daconil.

Grow the Best ... Forget the Rest!

Bill

"Do you apply fungicide before disease shows up?"

No, I don't even spray AFTER it shows up...:)

You know what works great for me?

raised beds
good organic mulch
proper spacing
soaker hose
good fall garden clean up
compost compost compost

That wasn't me this time!

Thanks for the links, Bill. I am enlightened. Your tomatoes look yummy. I like mine with fresh ground pepper and chopped onions (or chives, but mine seem bitter this year), maybe on a thick slice of German rye bread.

My cherries are a bit crowded by nearby plants this year - can I assume that could contribute to trapping airborne pathogens? If so, would increasing the airflow between plants help prevent fungus (help me as well as the OP - I don't mean to hijack the thread).

I won't use chemicals, and can stand to lose the harvest because of that ideology. I can, of course, see how serious hobbyists and those in the trade could not let that happen.

In defense of Daconil as an Integrated Pest managemant strategy these fungal disease can strike at anytime. Being in an area which is drought stricken this summer we haven't had much to worry about and the only sprays I've used on my tomatoes this year are Messenger(Harpin protein) and Epsom Salts.

The foggy nights and mornings tend to bring on ideal fungal growth conditions. I've run circulation fans in my high tunnels in the past years to try to keep plants well ventilated but it only helps to a point. Spacing plants farther apart will help a little too ( I am not a good example here). Chris, the problem with spacing is that it is pretty much predetermined at planting time.

Bill, those are beauties. I picked a few nice ones of my own today, but no pictures. As I picked the 30+ Purple Calabash I wondered how one would begin cleaning between the deep ribs of those fruits. I'm thankful that I don't have hardly a crack in any tomatoes (not even my Black from Tulas, Carolyn) which would tend to complicate the washing process.

One thing to keep in mind is to have a sense of pride in your produce. This may mean different things to different people. Doing the best that you can do with the resources available is something to be proud of.

This year my tomato crop couldn't be better but I can't say the same for sweet corn, potatoes any other non-irrigated crops. I guess my point is that when you have a good rainfall year there is still going to be something to complain about- diseases.

Chris,

I understand the desire of hobby gardeners to maintain the health of their tomato plants and the problems they face especially in disease prone regions. While I may think there's a lot of babying of tomatoes going on in this "heirloom" hobby ... others feel justified in what they do to guarantee maximum success.

If that means spraying fungicides, then I suppose it's a personal choice the individual home gardener must make. Personally, I fall in ranks with Big Daddy and try to find ways around spraying fungicides. But I'm not nearly as industrious as Big Daddy, nor nearly as experienced, so I have struggled this year in particular.

About 25% of my small plot has succumbed to one degree or another to wilt and other as yet unidentified foliar diseases. This is the first year I've had anything this drastic happen. Some of the varieties that were perfectly healthy over the past several years went down in mid July this year. Others are going down now. Such is life.

What I've done is prune very heavily near the bottom of the plants and pruned more heavily that usual up the plant especially suckers. I've pulled out about five plants that were heavily wilted and will pull out a few more this week.

I won't be growing certain varieties ever again, and I will be soaking my saved seeds in a brief Clorox bath after a long ferment. Additionally, I am going to limit seed trades since I've noticed foliar diseases in the past two years that I've never seen before and that I understood were not native to Southwest Indiana.

I'm not one who thinks hybrids with special disease resistance is the only answer. While I believe hybrids with built-in resistence are an aid to commercial tomato growers who generally are producing red tomatoes with smooth shoulders and who also tend to use fungicides and pesticides on a regular schedule. That is just the reality of the situation and is not applicable to my hobby gardening.

So ... I will continue to select varieties that show from experience that they are tolerant or resistent to the foliar disorders that have shown up in my garden. It matters little to me whether they are open pollinated or hybrids since I'm creating my own hybrids and growing them out anyway ... they're all of value in my book so long as they're strong, productive, good looking, and taste good.

On the otherhand, and to illustrate my feelings about small commercial truck gardeners, let me post a few photographs of a friend of mine's tomato plants. He has about 25 acres under cultivation this year with sweet corn, tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, squash, eggplants, peppers, onions and okra. He has a roadside stand, sells wholesale to restaurants and grocery stores, and wholesales to other seasonal local vendors who operate their own farm markets and stands.

Jim grows nothing but hybrid tomatoes, and most of the rest of his produce is hybrid varieties, except I think Blue Lake green beans. He sprays with Bravo and Serenade as well as other pesticides. All his tomatoes are under black strip plastic with drip irrigation. All are in cage supports 4.5 feet tall with additional metal support stakes. Most of his cukes, peppers, and eggplants also are set up with plastic sheet mulch and drip irrigation.

He's 71 years old, plants everything himself with his daughter and wife, and hires highschool students during the summer to pick and other chores for 9 bucks an hour. He is a wonderful and industrious man. Here are a few shots of his garden with tomatoes 100 plants to the row, etc. ...

Some Big Beef ... his personal favorite ... alongside his F-150 Ford pick-up, like mine, a local favorite.

More Big Beef ... he probably grows, I didn't count, maybe 10 - 12 rows 100 Big Beef plants each row.

The rows are kinda long and green ...

... and numerous ...

He plants Mt. Fresh, a Randy Gardner local favorite, as his fall tomato crop.

Here's a close-up of the Mt. Fresh to show how he sets up his cages.

He's trying out some Solar Set (first five plants to the left) to see how it does in the mid-summer heat.
Unfortunately it gets the Early Blight.

Here's some peppers and eggplant. He grows humongous Bell peppers and some sort of fairly older hybrid variety of ordinary black eggplants.
Curiously, the eggplants were infested with something that looked almost identical to Early Blight but some of the plants seemed
almost immune while the rest were infested.

Here's his equally industious wife gazing at Jim and probably wondering ... "why me, oh Lord?"

Bill

I really enjoyed looking at your friend's farm pictures. Whew, what alot of work--and 71 to boot. But the plants and countryside look beautiful.

I've sprayed Daconil as a preventive more this year than even before. And it appears to have helped. Of the tomatoes I've picked I've noticed very little film. Not sure why. I do wash everyone good. Planning on stopping in another few weeks. I've lost over 30% of my garden to various troubles this year. The biggest of which has been TSWV. Daconil don't work on it but if it save them from the blight ect. at least it will give me a chance to have a few more. I may not mix mine as strong as others. I have had to spray more the last two years than I had in the ten years previous. I do plan on trying beneficials next year. When I needed them this year the nursery had already quit handling them. You have to decide if you are going to just walk aways from the time and money invested or try to save at least some. For me I decided to save them.
Bill thanks for the pictures. I enjoy seeing hard working people like that and their results. Jay

Trudi said: "Doof--you have a computer with an internet hook up? It took me less than two minutes to find the UC IPM Online Tomato page. Extensions throughout the country are making a concerted effort to digitalize their informaton for you to access freely and immediately."

Yup. I've used that site many, many times, and many of the other states' extension sites as well, for tomatoes and other crops. However, when it comes to asking a question, it's not exactly a total blank wall, but it's extremely difficult to contact anybody. What I need to do is make a friend in the business locally that I can call.

I'll give you an example of what I mean with the UC IPM thing. I was getting frustrated that my Arapaho blackberries weren't growing very quickly. A discussion in another forum led to somebody saying that you can't grow any blackberries in southern California because of the chill hour requirements, which I knew to be totally untrue for a number of reasons, especially since I grew up here. That led to my going once again trying to reach a human at the UC IPM, which eventually led to them sending me a form email with advice that was years out of date and off topic. And it had a phone number to call which had an answering message with an email address for the master gardener program.

Really, their website is pretty good, but contacting them is fruitless. No pun intended.

I enjoyed the pics...:)