I wouldn't dig the potatoes until at least a day or two after every last tomato plant has been pulled up and bagged and put in the trash. This is because when you dig the potatoes, you need to let them air dry for a while to dry the skins before you put the potatoes into storage. There are differing recommendations as to how long you have to leave them out in the open air, but during this time your infected tomato plants will be releasing millions of Late Blight spores into the air. Those spores are going to float around your garden on air currents and a lot of them will land on the potatoes you just dug. Then when you put the potatoes into storage with their cargo of Late Blight spores, the spores will grow and you'll have a mess of rotting potatoes. I would wait until all the tomato plants are long gone.

It is neither early blight nor late blight. Right now I would say that they have a bit of septoria. If I look closely at one or two of those photos, there are some signs of it. Also, there could be an issue with either over-watering or soggy soil that's not draining well. Of course, we can't do a lot about all this rain, *sigh*. For the septoria, which doesn't look horrible right now, I would use a fungicide for vegetables - one that contains Chlorothalonil (Daconil, Ortho Garden). Use according to package directions. All fungicides must be used as preventatives; none are curative. They will not kill existing disease but will keep it from starting and spreading. And, they must be applied regularly. If you are gardening organically, I would go with one of the copper-based fungicides. Follow package directions for dilutions and frequency of application. Now I'll let you in on a little secret here in the Northeast: :-) Septoria is usually transient. Once the weather dries out and the temps increase, it will stop progressing. It is the cool, wet weather that creates the environment for it to thrive. So, you don't normally get a fungicide just for septoria. However, a fungicide will help prevent early blight, which is very common and far more difficult to arrest. And, if there happens to be any late blight around, it will help to prevent that as well. So it's worth using to prevent other fungal diseases. You can remove the affected leaves, but don't feel that you have to remove every leaf that has a small spot or two. As the septoria stops, it will just leave a few spots on an otherwise perfectly good leaf. However, if you're looking at cool temps and rain for another week, you may want to be more aggressive about removing affected leaves. Some folks say that you should bag the affected foliage and throw it in the garbage to prevent the spread of disease. Do that, but don't think it will forever eliminate septoria and early blight. Those fungi are all over -- in the air, in rain droplets -- so you can be extremely fastidious and still get those fungus diseases. Just an FYI. Happy gardening!

No. nothing to do with when they get the disease. They are two different diseases.

As I recall all three of Dr. Gardner's latest hybrids have resistance to Late Blight ( P. infestans), but Mt Magic the most so. Randy, whom I've known since the early 90's when Mulio I think was getting his degree with him so Mulio knows one heck of a lot of tomato genetics if you haven't figured that out, LOL, sent me lots of seed for all three last Spring and I grew all three last summer but couldn't assess LB tolerance b'c it was known that LB was going to be a problem here in the NE so I had a choice of spraying or possibly getting no tomatoes at all. I chose to spray. So I couldn't assess LB resistance for the hybrids Smarty, Mt Magic or Plum Regal last summer. Smarty is already available at Johnny's Selected Seeds and Bejo seeds was to distribute seeds of Magic and Regal to retail places for 2010 but there were problems with seed production in the Netherlands so fingers crossed that they'll be available for 2011. Actually I just made a free seed offer for Smarty, magic and Regal ( with his OK) at another site b'c no way would I ever use all the seeds that Randy sent, and those were sent, I think, as thanks for the 20 varieties or so of heirloom tomatoes I sent at his request, altho he didn't ask for 20, LOL, that he wanted to look at for possible inclusion in his breeding programs. Randy is OK with Darrel offering plants and my offering seeds b'c he feels that the more folks who can grow them the better exposure they get and that's a plus all the way around as he sees it and I do as well. I thought that the two best tasting ones, aside from LB concerns, were Mt Magic and Smarty. They produced wonderfully last summer, all 3 did, in a season where I didn't get fruits off of half the plants I had out there. Sigh. And of course taste is personal and subjective, I can only mention my own taste experience with the three. Timmy, Dr. Zitter and Dr. Gardner have known each other and collaborated many times, especially with regard to Early Blight ( A. solani) in the past. it was Dr. Zitter than I first contacted when I saw somerhing with my seedlings that I couldn't ID. Dr. Zitter said he thought it was an aberrant form of EB but they hadn't been able to prove it so I called it CRUD, and it affects mostly, but not exclusively, heart shaped varieties with wispy droopy foliage as well as Kellogg's Breakfast, but not so much KBX the PL form of KB, which is interesting, to me at least. Carolyn