The link below from Cornell should answer all of your questions.

What you do for next year is different for potatoes and tomatoes and the info about potatoes starts mainly at question #18 of this excellent FAQ from Cornell, but I suggest that folks read the whole FAQ.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato and Potato LB

Thank you!! That's about late blight (mine's early blight) but I assume the information is generally applicable. I can't tell you how relieved I am!!! I can try again next year after all. (Think I will pinch out my tomato plants for better air circulation, and start copper applications earlier next year!)

Thank you!! That's about late blight (mine's early blight) but I assume the information is generally applicable. I can't tell you how relieved I am!!! I can try again next year after all. (Think I will pinch out my tomato plants for better air circulation, and start copper applications earlier next year!)

****

My error b/c I didn't even see Early Blight ( reading fast inbetween watching Tennis on TV) and since so many are posting about Late Blight, well, I goofed. LOL

Early Blight is the most common tomato disease in the world. It's everywhere. Copper would be a backup if I were trying to prevent it next year, but Daconil, aka Ortho Garden Disease would be my first choice b/c it will not only help to prevent the fungal foliage infections, but also helps with the squash, etc., and powdery Mildew.

Moving the plants next year won't help that much b'c the spores of Early Blight are spread by wind and rain and are going to land wherever they want to.

Spores of EB shed to the ground this year can cause splashback infection next year so what I'd do is to hand dig, not rototill, the area where your tomatoes and potatoes are so that the spores are buried.

Then plant your tomatoes and potatoes in another area from this year so you don't have to worry about splashback infection, but as I said, the spores of EB are equal opportunity pathogens and can easily infect the foliage in the new area next year as well. Spacing out more and thinning plants isn't going to help that much.

So please consider using Ortho Garden Disease Control next year.

(We're eating the potatoes as fast as we can before they all go bad, and freezing the few tomatoes we salvaged)

EB is a foliage disease and wouldn't affect the potatoes themselves underground, so I don't understand this comment.

And with EB yes, tomato fruits can be affected but it isn't common and the lesions are only around the stem end of the fruits and there's nothing wrong with cutting off that area and using the fruits.

When you speak of bad potatoes and bad tomatoes I have to wonder if indeed it might be Late Blight that you're seeing and not the Early Blight you say your tomato and potato plants have, especially since you're calling it a horror and foliage diseases by themselves are not all that bad most of the time.

Carolyn

Carolyn137, Thank you so much for the above link. I just discovered LB in my 'field' today and was wondering how to deal with 500 plants and what to do for the soil next year. The article provided me answers and gave me some relief that I don't have to worry about the soil next year. Let's hope for a better 2010!

Would it be horribly rude to print out that pdf and leave it on the door of the gardener around the corner? The one with an entire garden of dead late blight tomato plants, just sitting there, and have for a week? not to mention, I'm right in the wind path from those stupid plants.

Platys, you could always slip out in the middle of the night and pulled them up yourself *wink wink*. But giving your neighbor information in the form of a note on the door shouldn't be rude

I don't have Blight but I worry about growing potatoes, tomatoes and peppers basically in the same spot year after year. To help out, since rotation simply is not possible, I sow winter wheat in the fall. Not only does it protect the soil during winter, it returns nitrogen to the ground. In May, I mow the wheat adding the foliage to the compost pile then till the roots into the soil.

Mike

Mike, what zone do you live? Where do you buy winter wheat seeds? What month you are planting wheat?

I can't rotate things in my garden as well, i would like to try your method.

Pray for better weather next year!
Like Carolyn said, splash up from the ground is a problem, so mulch under your plants with leaves, straw,paper, or plastic mulch to help keep it from splashing up.
When you see some signs of blight, pick off those leaves asap and get rid of them

platys,

Maybe you can offer to help your neighbor take them out, as a fellow gardener... I'm afraid my plants sat that way for awhile after succumbing... it is hard to keep up sometimes with three little kids to care for, all under the age of 4! Maybe your neighbor is in a situation that leaves them strapped for time, and you offering to help could be a blessing to you both!

Thank you for that link Carolyn! I'm in the city and really have no way to dispose of my 11 tomato plants - it's going to be weeks before we're "allowed" to dispose of any yard wastes, which I usually don't anyway as I compost everything. I had thrown some trimmings on the compost pile before I realized what was going on and that I had late blight and I was sick that I had ruined all my gorgeous compost and didn't know what I was going to do with all the plant refuse I have from the tomatoes. It's a relief to know I can bury them and the spores will be destroyed - and hopefully our freezing temps will be the final deathknell for the buggers!! I just might cover them with some black plastic for a few days before I compost them just to make sure!!

Lisa

Perhaps the best thing in addition to good cleanup this year is starting prevention early next year. I will be spraying my plants with both a surface/contact fungicide and approved systemic BEFORE they even leave their trays next season!

Hey korney. What is your choice of sprays? If you spray before planting is this good for the entire year? I have Daconil the I bought for my berries.....

Thank you for the link! I am so pleased to know that it does not over winter!

I'll be using bigger guns next year! Daconil is what I used this year, I alternated it with Mancozeb, but Mancozeb has a 5 days to harvest, Daconil/chlorothalonil you can harvest the same day I believe.

Spraying before planting gives you a head start but you still would need to spray regularly; as many found out this year, spraying after a disease is present is usually hopeless, at least to home gardeners with $15 fungicides--you really need to spray preventatively, not as a curative.

There are very few curatives out there and they are quite costly. Some are systemic, some are trans-laminar--if you spray on the tops of the leaves, it translocates itself THROUGHOUT the plant and the leaves, giving protection to the undersides that are often missed. Some are even used as soil drenches. Of course, be sure they are labeled for tomatoes--do not try to use systemics from roses & other flowers on vegetables! Some actually feed on the disease if encountered within a couple/few days of infection. Still others are recommended to be mixed/used with other preventatives like Daconil/chlorothalonil/maneb/mancozeb.

Most important is to alternate methods & fungicides so as not to let the disease(s) build up a resistance to them. I believe one of the strobins, Ridomil Gold, is already no longer effective due to resistance.

For those organic growers, things will be tougher yet. I believe your best choices would be a high metal content copper (53%, NOT the common 8%) and possibly Serenade MAX, though it hasn't shown to do much good against LB. But are organic gardeners willing to spend $100 on a bag of Champ copper? Or at most use $10 eight percent copper? Or will they grow without any fungicides? After this year, I think many people may rethink their strategies for next year--I know I will NOT accept nor tolerate a year without maters if I can do something about it!

Hope this helps.

Korney, when you spray before planting, are you talking of spraying the plant, the roots, or everything? Altho I try not to use too much stuff on my garden I would like to have the knowledge of what I can do as a bare minimum...if it's a matter of some disease getting the 'maters or ME I will do what needs to be done.... :)

Spraying the plant, although 1 fungicide I'm considering can also be used as a soil drench and is systemic/trans laminar. Also, Daconil/Bravo/Equus sticks pretty well to the plant so even after rain there is still some product remaining to work slightly until you reapply. Consecutive applications make a thicker layer providing increased effectiveness. Perhaps that's why Cornell mostly recommended chlorothalonil based products during the late blight outbreak, and maybe that's why there are still tomato plants alive out there through the outbreak.

Maybe the problem with Serenade was that it wasn't applied enough, or soon enough, or wasn't applied before the disease was present, not sure.

Here's a good link from Cornell & Fry Lab; it listed a bunch of varieties and susceptibility to Late Blight. Also near the bottom, it listed how various fungicides did against LB in a couple different years. Serenade's ingredient is B. subtilis. While it was only tested on potatoes, it still scored rather poorly (0% to 7%, whereas chlorothalonil products, ie. Bravo Weatherstik, had 90-99% efficacy.) What's interesting is that they list efficacy as:

efficacy = reduction in disease severity relative to unsprayed control

If this is so, then we must assume it was applied after the disease was already presentor continually applied (before AND after)--and it actually worked...this is contrary to what we all thought, that it was lethal and incurable, and all plants would be dead in just a couple days. I'm not saying that Bravo WS cures LB, but according to Fry Lab, there was a 99% "reduction" in some years tested.

I'm not against organic gardening, it's just, to me, having tomatoes is more important than growing [no tomatoes] organically.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fry Lab: Tools for Combating Late Blight

I know someone in CT that had some experience with late and early blight and may have some answers. I'll leave his link below. Give him a call or send him an email.

Here is a link that might be useful: Joe

Evergreen,

Your link takes me to a commercial site selling a product but I don't see any data that tells me how effective this product might be in terms of prevention of either Early or Late BLight.

Can you share with us your own experience with this product and how effective it has been with prevention of Early and Late BLight in your own garden?

Yes, I understand that it's composed of live bacteria and well, I'm a retired Microbiologist but don't see any of those bacteria mentioned but perhaps I missed that.

As an organic product I'm wondering how it might differ from using just compost tea and that has not been that effective with preventing either Early ( A.solani) or LAte ( P. infestans) Blight, the latter being a systemic disease that is usually lethal.

Carolyn

Maybe... solarizing your soil...by putting a tarp over your soil all summer and plant your garden somewhere else..or make a raised bed.

Also, you could try planting your garden like you did last year and spraying ACTINOVATE...I've never tried it, but it may work.

Posted by evergreenagriculture (My Page) on Sun, Feb 7, 10 at 0:04

I know someone in CT that had some experience with late and early blight and may have some answers. I'll leave his link below. Give him a call or send him an email.

Here is a link that might be useful: Joe

BLATANT SPAM ALERT

The contact link at "JOE" leads to a page saying evergreenagriculture.com is a partner site.

Last winter another frequent poster to the forum from Germany,
ami meisenbacher(hope I have spelled it correctly), suggested Actinovate for blight control as well as other folliage deseases.

I did some research on the stuff, found out it was approved for use in Ohio and PA, googled it up on the Web, and bought a little bag of it for about $25. I found it goes a long way and had at least 1/3 of the bag left at years end, having used it as a root drench when planting and then 3 cover sprays for over 60 plants. I bought another baggy for this year.

The most important thing is IT WORKS!!!!! Consistent with
good use practices for pesticides (there is an excellent summary above) I used various fungacides as potassium bicarbonate, daconil, mancozeb, and also corn meal extract
to alternate with the Actinovate. Indeed, this keeps the nasty critters off balance!

Surrounding my two gardens in both Ohio and PA were garden disasters of biblical (or at least Irish) scale! And Lucky Old Me, who bought into the Actinovate and perhaps also the
corn meal extract story, just simply inserting those two
sprays selectively into what I had already done in the past,
came out with a record crop of beautiful tomatoes, watermelons, squash, cukes, and peppers.

Well, you know, even a blind squirrel will pick up an acorn now and then! But here is the most important part of this story (which I supply for those like me who are judgementally impaired) 1) Know that I am subject to terrible errors in judgement and observation and check out everything I suggest real good before you do anything like it lest you get sick and maybe bad enough to croak. 2) Be sure you find out from your local ag agent or online state ag dept. publications what pesticides are and what are not approved for application in your state 3) If you are doing something else that works keep doing it if it is legal and please let us all know what it is! 4) And pay good attention to application instructions on pesticide containers and do what they say using the dosage amounts they recommend.

Do you think Actinovate is like Serenade? I used Serenade and it held off the inevitable but it just delayed the progression. No cure, but just a delay.

Trudi,

I did try Serenade and I believe it was 3 years ago. I
couldn't see any evidence of improved control, but it might have just been the year or how and when I applied it.

Last year, in the 3rd week of August, early blight was starting to really get hold of my plants. I had been trimming infected branches off since late spring and using my varied combo sprays with sticker added weekly. (I don't use any mancozeb, however, after my little greenies get to be about 1 1/4" dia.) It was then I did my first Actinovate cover spray--that following a pretty good rain.

During the following week I didn't see much advance in early blight. At the end of that week I applied another cover spray of Actinovate + Daconil+ potassium bicarbonate+
the corn meal extract spray; no sticker was added.

What I saw in the following weeks was that I had pretty well wiped out 95% of any foliage desease!!! I never bothered to spray again and harvested tomatoes clear up to
mid October. At that time, the weather had turned pretty cold, blight was starting to return to about 1/2 the plants, and frost soon followed. I stripped the garden in the 3rd week of October, putting all plant refuse into the burning pile.

Here is another piece of information which speaks to the corn meal extract spray. My daughter gardens a few blocks from me. She works and has difficulty scheduling the kind of attention and sprays necessary to keep foliage desease under control. Her tomato plants were in terrible shape by mid August, most had been stripped of so many infected lower branches they were nude 3 ft or more up from the ground. She is the one who found out about the corn meal extract spray and sold me on trying it. I believe she made
one application during the 2nd week of August and a second during the 1st week of Sept. Her plants soon developed new branches and fruit stems, rebloomed, and she had a nice early fall harvest!

Gardens all around us gave up to late blight last year, following a tough fight with early blight. We never experienced any late blight.

Some added details: I grow on black plastic with diamond shaped ports for each plant. The plastic is used once then consigned to the burning pile. I am going to start using some landscape fabric to cover the ports to reduce weeds and
splash--may also experiment with straw. Also, I was finally able to get some spray concentration data for using
hydrogen peroxide (actually, some commercial products are now available but are expensive) and I plan on a medium sized test program next year. Sprays will be applied at late dusk and will have done all they could do and will have disappeared long before the sun ever contacts them.
(For all those similarly judgementally impaired folks please refer to the last paragraph of my Feb 7 post just above for essential warnings and precautions!)

Could you please tell me more about the corn meal extract, if it's something you can brew at home that would be great because corn meal is cheap ;-)

I've just been researching this. The best info I found was here:
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/view_question.php?id=18

I am definitely going to try it this year...

Here is a link that might be useful: cornmeal for blights

Trudi,

Google "Texas A&M Corn Meal Spray" and a world of information pops up on the screen.

I used plain old store bought corn meal, 5 lbs will surely last me many many years. Just one caution: straining the juice is very important as the nozzle on the sprayer will
continuously plug up. I used a vegetable sieve and that
proved not to be fine enough. One could try a coffee filter
but I wonder if the colloidal stuff suspended in the water
might not be very important. Maybe a course muslin.

Larry

Thank you Larry! I suspect the suspension has got the goodies ;-)

Larry/Trudi

You may find the GW post below to be of interest. Corn meal DOES work on some funguses but maybe NOT on tomato funguses.

See what you think.

Here is a link that might be useful: The cornmeal experiment

Frankly, Anney, I don't know. But it sure comes at a reasonable price and it and nothing else cleaned up the mess in my daughter's garden last year.

I know darn well when one does an experiment only one variable at a time should be tested. But when my garden
begins to look like I am moving towards a blight catastrophe
I have to do something dramatic; so I throw everything at the problem I can to save the show. Yep, the scientific method goes to the back of the bus in favor of saving the
plants by any means possible!

I would love to have the time and capacity to test out
all the various blight control methodologies and materials in an objective scientific manner. I also believe that there are substantial differences between tomato varieties
in their tolerance levels to early blight, though I agree with Carolyn that all will eventually give in to it if not
effectively treated. When I was growing commercially some years ago I did a lot of work with this and did come to many conclusions as to which varieties to avoid and which to grow. I did collect a lot of data and used it every year in variety selection. But to have developed scientifically valid data worthy of publication I would have had to have grown like 24 to 50 of each variety to be compared, over several patches of differing garden soil,
perhaps in differing climates, certainly over several years. The most I ever compared of any one variety was perhaps 6 plants. At the time I was doing around 150 plants a year and at least 50 to 60 varieties.

So, for most of us gardening has to be an artform rather than a pure science. We are certainly entitled to our experience and observations, and that, hopefully, should guide us towards more consistent results.

A following thought on the corn meal spray matter.

Years ago, when old heirloom varieties of sweet corn like Golden Bantom, Country Gentlemen, and Silver Queen were popular we would often see fields attacked by a fungus stuff on the ears called smut. Nasty looking stuff!

I haven't seen this on corn for many years and suspect that
the modern hybrid varieties have had resistance to smuit bred into them.

So I wonder if corn meal made from old or new varieties might work best for dealing with tomato foliage critters.

Larry

"The Dirt Doctor" says to use horticultural cornmeal for plant funguses, that grocery store corn meal doesn't do the trick. See below.

Maybe Nandina's tests were with non-horticultural corn meal. At any rate, I really wish SOMETHING cost-effective could knock out tomato blights, funguses, diseases, etc.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornmeal Products and Use

I have taken a leap of faith.

I ordered tomato seeds by the dozen yesterday - all kinds of special varieties the country stores around her don't sell. Then I found some transplants - I got one of each of the kind I really want to grow.

Now if that dang blight sets in I am going to be P I z z ed off.

I am thinking about raising the beds a little more and using clear plastic to "tent" them to keep the rain off. Hopefully if won't be weather similar to Vietnam here this summer. I want to get a head start on all this.

Can someone tell me what seems to be the best chemical to spray in the prevention of late blight?

I had just gotten my babies that I grew from seed all up in a Florida Weave and wooza - the next day they were covered in black spots.

Also does anyone have ideas about "blue mulch" (actually blue plastic) that might increase production?

larryw, glad to hear about your success with Actinovate. I just placed an order for Actinovate last week for this year. Another product I came across and used last year was Agri-Fos.It is biofriendly and one of the few fungicides on the market that acts as a systemic as well. Ami

Here is a link that might be useful: Agri-Fos

Ami

The Agri-Fos label mentions that it will treat late blight in potatoes. Do you suppose it will treat tomatoes, too?

Anney, I have just explored Dr. Dirt's site re using cornmeal as a plant fungicide. As usual he is giving incomplete advice. He takes ideas posted on GardenWeb and that other gardening Forum we can't mention here and gives them his own spin omitting important information.

To date, after much experimentation, I have not had success controlling any tomato diseases/blights/fungus using cornmeal. Some have reported good results but I am not been able to. For those who would like to try a cornmeal tea do a search here on GW for Cornmeal Tea to find formulas I have posted. Also do a search for Aspirin Technique which has been my personal best, cheap remedy to date. Some claim it is not organic but to date aspirin has been certified safe for human consumption.

The IMPORTANT part of attempting to control tomato problems with WHATEVER one chooses to use is to begin treatment EARLY in the tomato's growth...when the plant has grown a second set of true leaves is a good time to begin.

nandina

Glad you chimed in. I wasn't sure you'd see the post.

I wasn't aware that one should begin aspirin treatments with such young plants, second set of leaves. I will definitely do that. I've broadcast cornmeal and ground up aspirin over my tomato patches in the past and must say they didn't do a thing to keep my tomatoes safe from funguses, the worst being the late blight that hits us all here in the South. And sometimes it isn't so "late" in the season, last year for instance. But I didn't spray the leaves.

Anyway, aspirin spray for late blight and painting very young tomatoes with calcium for protection against BER (my experiment this upcoming year).

One can only try and hope it works...

Anney, yes Agri-Fos will treat Late Blight in Tomatoes as well. I'm also looking at Corn Meal this year. I believe they sell aspirin in Tablets that dissove in water like the old Alka Seltser. Thats what I use here in Germany as a foliar spray.Also if you can get Azoxystrobim which is derived from mushrooms it is effective on blight as well. I know they have a couple products out there with azoxystrobin but don't know if it's available to gardeners. I used it last year with excellent results. Ami

Ted/Anney, I believe Early Blight has now developed resistance to many of the Strobins (Azoxystrobin, fluoxystrobin, trifloxystrobin, etc) at least in NY. These are found in many of the "big guns" like Quadris, Flint, etc. They recommend the "improved" versions or dual components that also contain chlorothalonil (Quadris Opti, etc.)

Group 11 Strobilurins (QoI) and "like"
"Because of EB* resistance to Strobilurins in NYS, consider Quadris Opti or Cabrio + Endura, or Tanos tank-mixed with protectant, or consider Gavel, but never use strobilurins alone for EB control."

I hear you Mark. I think they recommend only 2 or 3 applications per season. This is why I added Agri-Fos (also called EXEL LG) to my regimen along with the Actinovate. Just make sure you separate your application of the above products as one may affect the other. Ami

what i use is baking soda spray / 1 tbs baking soda /1 tbs vegie oil / 1/2 teaspoon dish soap / and spray leaves /use this spray early and often as the plant grows / i also throw corn meal around the plants on the ground / and prune the bad leafes and remove / do not touch other leafes wash hands well b4 touching the plants again

I use Mancozeb mixed to directions/gallon and then add/gallon two heaped tablespoons of baking soda and one good teaspoon of murphy's oil. This mixture works very well for me. You need to make sure you spray the underneath of the leaves as much as on top of them. The blight was early and hard hitting last year where we are but our plants outlasted other gardeners in the area by four to five weeks. I spray the plants the day I plant them out and then on a weekly basis after they are half grown, about 3 to 3.5 feet high. I use the same mix on tomatoes, potatoes and
cucumbers. If you don't like using chemicals you'll just have to endure the early death of your plants and little production.

In this pic I let mom give the cucumber patch a dose of my mix. She's slowing down but still does OK for a 89 year young gal! She's been gardening since she married dad in her early twenties.

{{gwi:1388678}}

Here is a link that might be useful: Mom's Garden Pics

The Amish use a solution of Epsom salts on their tomato plants when the blight first appears .They recommend 1 cup Epsom Salts to 5 gallons of water then spray on a weekly basis.I have tried this on my own plant and so far on blight.

Not sure what epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) would do other than perhaps act as a sulfur spray--sulfur fungicides aren't very effective on tomato diseases anyway. Of course, it may help a mag deficiency and green up some leaves! Just don't see how it fights diseases.