Although i havent tried it yet myself, a product called "Serenade" is suppposed to help with all types of conditions,including Early and Late Blight, I have seen it for sale at ( Forgive me) Wal Mart, iam not sure where else it would be available. it is a pre mixed spray, that is supposed to be safe to use right up to harvest. It is available mail order from several on line retailer as well. here is the link to the "Serenade" site. www.agraquest.com

The first step is avoidance, protect your plants from the spores that cause Early Blight. Since those spores do come from the soil good mulches are necessary. Promoting rapid leaf drying and not getting the leaves of the plants wet can also help. To the best of my knowledge the only effective control for an organic gardener is copper fungicides, which if applied properly should not have that much adverse affect on the earthworm poopulation. I do not see that Serenade is listed as a control for Early Blight. Milk, a 50/50 mixture, is effective for controlling Powdery Mildew, Black Spot, and a few other fungal diseases as is baking soda. I find nothing about either as a control for Early Blight, however.

Your problem could be something as simple as over-watering rather than early blight as the symptoms can be somewhat similar. So without knowing what the real cause of the problem is it's difficult to know what to do. I could rule out Early Blight here in my garden simply because it is far too early for it to develop here but that is not be the case in your zone. Either way you have done what you can to slow it down if it is Early Blight (although spraying fungicides until dripping isn't rally recommended). Is it common for plants to recover from EB? No, although if fungicides are used regularly it can be slowed enough that they can continue to grow and produce some fruit. But plants can recover from over-watering so if it isn't EB then you need to evaluate the other possible causes and address them. You could try slightly increasing the duration of your watering but reducing the frequency by half for a week and see what happens. Meanwhile there is no need to rip out the plants. Dave

I have been growing in containers for many years indoors and in greenhouses, but not outdoors where they are exposed to the elements. I have grown with chemical and organic fertilizers in containers so i'm familiar with both. I haven't grown tomatoes in about 15 years and the last time I did, they were put in the ground. This is the first time, i'm growing them in containers and its outside. After reading your comments, im guessing that because I received an excess amount of rain for many days, that my soil ended up flushing out a good portion of the nutrients from containers. Then immediately after it was really hot and many time humid. I live in NC in zone 7b. With the excessive rain and then heat my soil may have also experience ph swings possibly locking out nutrients (this is just speculation) My soil in the containers is as follows: Daddy Pete's Organic Lawn and Garden Soil (contains manure), Bagged Oranic Humus and Manure, Mixed Large Amounts of Dirt from the ground with it. A lot of my ground soil contains a lot of clay and sand. Mixed all that together then added the following Amendments: Bone Meal, Blood Meal, Natures Blend Organic Fertilizer (Made by Miracle gro, its a green bag and its OMRI listed) Azomite Rock Dust for trace minerals Organic Lime Hollands Giants Mycorrhizae I added a decent amount of each I didn't add a whole lot because the plants were small so I didn't want to burn them and the bagged soil already had manure in it. I Mixed all that into the huge pile of dirt and then proceeded to fill the bags with the small plants. They were fine at first then when I got hit will all the excessive rain and then hot and humid weather (84-91 Degree F) their health rapidly declined. I was trying to stay organic like I said, hopefully that can workout. I appreciate everyone's help Im also going to add more soil to the bags and or transplant them into bigger bags if the plants bounce back. I just didn't want to do it because of their health and especially since I thought it was a pathogen or fungi. I didn't want to waste all the money on dirt if I had to toss all that soil out.