What a shame…
August 27, 2007I've been growing tomatoes in my garden. Some from seedlings and some germinated from seed. I had about 10 large tomato plants in my garden and another colony at my parents (I couldn't fit all the seedlings in pots in my garden).
Within the past few days, I've lost almost all the plants in my garden to tomato blight, a fungal infestation possibly brought on by the bad run of cloudy, damp weather we've had. My once-proud 8ft plants have turned into a rotten mush.
I spent this afternoon collecting the dead and trying to save the remainder with anti-fungal spray. There was a depressingly large amount of dead stuff to throw out. My garden feels very empty now without the tomatoes in there, so I'm going to have to think of something else to start growing.
Thankfully, Rebecca managed to salvage some of the ripe and unripe fruit from the vines, so we'll see what can be made with them. Rosie also turned up to commiserate (above).
Apparently, this year has been particularly bad in the UK for tomato blight, and farmers are going mad with the sprayers. As if to confirm this, the colony at my parents' house has also died out.
So, in future, I'll be making sure to spray them with anti-fungal chemicals regularly and to look out for the first signs of the rot setting in.
Either that, or emigrate to somewhere with proper summers.
I wonder why it is that the British are famed gardeners when we have such a rotten climate? Perhaps our island’s higher difficulty setting fosters gardeners with better skills and higher resilience?
[...] You may have read about the thrilling and gripping adventures I had in the garden last year here. [...]
Tomatoes are a Mediterranean plant really, they have drier summers. Mind you, if climate change is going to make us like the South of France or Italy, Tomato Blight might become a thing of the past!
I lost mine to this a couple of years ago. I didn’t know humidity plus overwatering and feeding would lead to such carnage, but its ideal for fungal spores! I look out for the tell-tale signs now such as leaf veins turning black and leaves curling or going yellow. I have gooseberry blight too, so everythings getting a good spray of Bordeaux Mixture! Its horrible stuff and covers everything in a light blue powder but basically I’ll try anything to save my fruit!
Take the tomatoes out in late August/early September, roots and all.
hang the plants upside down in a dry shed or garage
The remaining tomatoes will ripen as the plant slowly dries out.
I’ve been doing this for a while & it saves my tomato plants. Like you, I lost an entire year’s crop due to the blight – 12 tomato plants all in 2 days. Now I can “harvest” them though November.