Life after fungus-who knew?

14 years ago

{{gwi:1390143}}

Don't know why this post won't let me show 2 pics.(!)

Anyway, interestingly one month ago after much rain in my area I had horrible fungus,wiped out nearly all toms,vegs.

I did see little green sprouts on the ends of awful branches,vines. Leaves of cuks,zuks,toms were rotten, slimy, stunk but I wondered if they were cleaned out,cut out,-would plants continue as long as they had any life? They survived major surgery, it was disgusting getting under those rotten leaves.I sprayed with fungicide real good and waited for the sun to shine. Today they are producing again and I'm frankly surprised. I thought probably I should have torn everything out and cleaned up the garden for winter-just interesting that any plants would come back-am I the only one who didn't know that?

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Comments (4)

carolyn137
14 years ago
What you're seeing, at least for the tomatoes, is that if your tomato plants are infected early in the season with the more common foliage infections that foliage will die off and then near the end of the season new growth will often appear.

Since two of the common foliage pathogens are bacterial, spraying with an anti-fungal wouldn't have helped if that were the only problem. It's best to be able to ID which foliage pathogens are the problem so you know what to spray with.

I can't speak to the other crops you mentioned b'c I don't know what diseases they might have had.

Since the tomato plants lived and put out new growth you also know that the infection (s) probably wasn't/weren't Late Blight ( P.infestans) but knowing the specific symptoms of that disease you probably knew that already .

Hope that helps.

Carolyn
justaguy2
14 years ago
I have seen a lot of different plants get a foliage disease and then come back with new foliage. This year the most obvious one are my gourds. They were the first plants in the garden to get powdery mildew. Killed probably 3/4ths of the foliage.

Now they are growing well again even though some of the dead foliage is still hanging onto the plant (I would remove it, but first frost is likely only a week or two away at this point).

The thing about it is that in short season areas with long season plants, it's often enough of a set back that it really doesn't much matter that the plant is able to survive. Yield is set back enough to consider the plants dead for all practical (harvest) purposes.

Generally my method of dealing with foliage diseases is to remove all leaves showing symptoms and then on a one time basis use a fungicide on any leaves/stems remaining.

I used to think it insane to remove all affected foliage when 75+% of it was infected, but all this does is reveals if the plant can survive or not as quickly as possible. If it can survive the removal of all infected foliage *speeds up* the regrowth process such that some yield is still possible in many cases.
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Jennie Sims
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Daisy, I was just as shocked to see new growth on my disease riddled plants! I gave up trying to battle early blight and some other disease (not late blight) as it has been the rainiest season on record save one here in TN. I was fighting a losing battle. So I decided to just let them all die and wait until cooler weather to clean out the tomato garden. Lo and behold, I have a good foot and half of new growth on all the plants and a lot of green tomatoes and more flowers. The new tops seem to be healthy and are resisting, so far, any disease. So I may have an October crop after all!

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daisy735
Original Author
14 years ago
Jennie-that was my surprised reaction also when the garden reacted in such a healthy manner.(!)I thought the plants were all goners and yes I now have a fresh new garden with blooms and growth and new tomatoes,cukes,zuks. This was news to me -I thought; does everybody know the plants might come back? I never did and they do! Goodluck with your tomatoes- every year I learn something new!

Life after fungus-who knew?

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carolyn137

justaguy2

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carolyn137

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