Last year I got blight which permeated and destroyed my garden. Tiny brown spots on the leaves, massive curling and wilting, then yellowing and dying of plants. It got out of control before I knew what it was. This year, I have been spraying with Daconil, but after a two week vacation with no spraying, I saw it starting again on my plants. Many are curling, spots are appearing. I am spraying and cutting off leaves like mad, but I fear it may still be a problem. Two questions: is the curling a preliminary stage of blight, or something different? And second, will my garden ever be rid of this disease? I can't rotate. Let's back up here and try to determine what the specific problem is. I take it you're in the western part of NYS and that's inportant to know. Spots on the leaves usually indicate a foliage infection, either baterial or fungal, and Daconil is of no use if it's bacterial in origin. Wilting is not a symptom seen with foliage infections. In our area the systemic diseases that cause wilting are not all that common and if you have new soil in the raised beds then that makes that diagnosis quite remote. Is this the first year with the new soil or if not, did you see the same problems last year in the same spot? No, curled leaves are not necessarily a prelude to either Foliage diseases or systemic diseases. Since all NEW folaige diseases are ariborne, replacing soil can't prevent them. So lets go step by step and let me ask you to indicate what you see as the major problem, the wilting or the foliage disease? Blight is a general word and deosn't refer to any one specific disease. If you could be more specific about the wilting as opposed to the spots on the leaves that would be great. How big are the spots, what shape, what color, any concentric circles inside the spots and any yellow halos aroubd the spots when they appear on green leaves. I know, lots of questions here, but wilting and systemic diseases are not common where we live and foliage diseases are, but if you have both it's going to take some time to make sense of this, if we can. Carolyn

I live in Vermont and my tomato plants have wiped out by blight the last two years. I usually plant 60 to 70 plants of mostly paste tomatoes that my wife converts into sauce. No sauce the last two years. Last year I tried regular spraying with fresh Bordeaux mix and Ortho's Garden Problem Solver. However, once the cool damp weather started the disease spread like wild fire and killed the plants before most could produce ripe fruit. For what it's worth Big Beef seemed a little more resistant than Celebrity. I've grown several other beefsteaks and slicers in the past but these two always seem to do the best. With the paste tomatoes, Classica faired much better than Super Marzano, Viva Italian and Halley 3155. I thought that was peculiar since Classica is a more sprawling plant. I also tried JohnnyÂs blight resistant JTO-99197 last year. It faired about as well as Big Beef but succumbed to disease before producing ripe fruit nonetheless. All of my tomato plants were staked in rows, supported with polypropylene twine, and pruned. I did not mulch. Right now IÂm thinking IÂll skip growing tomatoes for a few years, or maybe just a couple heavily mulched Big Beef plants in a far corner of the garden. ItÂs kind of a bummer to garden without tomatoes but the last two years have been too much work with no return. Oregon State Univ. has produced a new variety called Legend that has been reported as having some blight resistants. Maybe I'll try a few of those this year. Good luck to all with your tomato plants this year.

While it is possible to mix several different fungicides, it is usually not the best way to manage diseases. The exception to this is when the two fungicides have totally different methods of working. Daconil is a surface coating that prevents the fungal organism from breaking through to the leaf surface. Copper is poisonous to the fungus. For this reason, mixing copper with daconil can work, they have different modes of effect. The idea behind alternating applications of any kind of pesticide/fungicide is to prevent resistance from developing. This applies when two fungicides have similar modes of working. so if two fungicides are poisons that kill the fungus, then they should be alternated. Neem and copper would be an example of two that should be alternated. DarJones

Well, at this point it's just a grudge thing, I guess. Sort of like the year I lost my lettuce to cabbage worms and ended up spraying the yard with nuclear waste byproducts. I had already given up hope of saving anything edible; I just wanted revenge for my own petty reasons. Seriously, though, I had had hopes until the last few days of saving some of the surviving tips of my burgundy traveler vines and maybe starting a new plant from cuttings. But their are signs of disease on all parts of the plant, even the tips, just not as badly there, so I can't see the point in trying unless I have something more reliable than what I am using right now. Thank you for telling me that Quadris is a restricted chemical. I didn't know that. Anti-blight studies on the web comparing the different anti-fungals don't mention things like that. What disease do I think I have? I think I have a mixture of septoria and daconil-resistant early blight. If you saw my thread Lots of pics of sick tomatoes, you saw what I had. If I had got a camera earlier, I could have uploaded pics before it had spread to the other plants. As it is now, the surviving plants all have it to some degree or another, with the two Druzbas being the least phased by it all. Chock one up for Druzba -- not the tastiest tomato, but oh man, is it healthy and productive. I don't find it worth eating, but the neighbors love them. It has many blight-affected leaves, but it hasn't been so thoroughly defoliated and seems to be making a very effective comeback.