is it tomato blight?

[ginnyinWI]

My tomato plants met an early death--all the lower leaves turned brown and died. Is this tomato blight? I don't suppose I want them in my compost pile, do I? Should I burn the leaves or what?

Also, next year do I need to move the tomatoes to a new location? What would be safe to put in this spot? Maybe broccoli or something unrelated to tomatoes.

[Agony]

1. The answer is absolutely

maybe!

***My tomato plants met an early death--all the lower leaves turned brown and died. Is this tomato blight?***

Hi, Ginny! The answer is a bit more complex than yes or no. Tomato blight can mean either "Early Blight" or "Late Blight" and they are two different organisms. Early Blight is an Alternaria fungus and Late Blight is Phytophthora, an Oomycete also known as a Water Mold. Because Late Blight is all over the news this year I suspect that is what you are asking about.

I would say that you could have, Early or Late Blight or Septoria Leaf Spot (another fungus) or even a Walnut tree too close to your garden.

You said that all the "lower" leaves died. Does this mean that the top of the plants are still alive and you have tomatoes? How are the tomatoes looking?

Late Blight typically progresses until the whole plant is dead, dead, dead. Late Blight lesions may have a white fuzzy appearance often on the underside of the leaf during humid/wet conditions, this is the organism producing spores that can re-infect the rest of your plant or spread to your neighbor. As they start to develop Late Blight lesions may look "wet or greasy" and the lesions may appear on the stem as well as the leaves. Late Blight will also infect the tomatoes themselves which will usually rot, green tomatoes that you otherwise could pick and ripen inside will rot before ripening.

Early Blight is less aggressive. The top of the plant may survive and infected tomatoes may have a leathery, brown side to them but you can still cut them in half and use part of the tomato before they go bad. The early blight lesions don't tend to get the wet/greasy look of late blight.

Septoria Leaf Spot starts as yellow spots on the lower leaves that slowly take over the whole leaf, turn brown and progress up the plant. Fruit infected with Septoria get funky "spots" on them but are often mostly usable.

Walnut trees will kill your tomatoes when the roots of both plants find each other. Walnut roots exude a chemical, juglone, that is deadly to tomatoes. Usually the whole tomato plant suddenly drops dead, this is probably not your problem but a good thing to know about if you have lots of Walnut trees.


*** I don't suppose I want them in my compost pile, do I? Should I burn the leaves or what?***

Others will argue with me on this one, but there is really very little danger in using these plants in your compost. This assumes that you do a good job of composting, turning, aerating, proper ratio of Carbon:Nitrogen etc. Late blight will not survive colder winter conditions unless it is in "living plant tissue", obviously if you completely compost your plant it is not living. You should realize that Late Blight also infects potatoes and that potatoes that survive the winter underground are a common way for Late Blight to survive the winter and re-infect your plants when the potato sprouts next year. While what I have stated above is historically true, there is an important caveat to all of this. There is an uncommon but unfortunately growing possibility that Late Blight can survive winter conditions where two distinct mating types of Phytophthora, A1 and A2 occur together and produce sexual oospores that can survive the winter freely in the soil. Your local Cooperative Extension should be aware if this condition exists in your area. You could also just throw your tomato plants over the back fence, but what fun would that be? It would be fun to have a bonfire tho...

I grow both tomatoes and potatoes, our potatoes have Late Blight, our tomatoes are so far surviving. This year I flamed all of our potatoes immediately upon discovering Late Blight to reduce the possibility that the spores will wash down into the soil and infect the tubers and to reduce the numbers of spores that might spread to our tomatoes. So far so good... I use AACT (actively aerated compost tea) on the tomatoes which has almost eliminated the Septoria Leaf spot that was always a big problem for me. If you want to understand more about this and why Sir Albert Howard and Rodale were on to something, invest the time to read Ingham's soilfoodweb.com. You could put that compost to work.


***Also, next year do I need to move the tomatoes to a new location? What would be safe to put in this spot? Maybe broccoli or something unrelated to tomatoes.***

Crop rotation is always a good idea for everything you grow. You are correct that a rotation should not involve related plants, broccoli would be fine as it is a Brassica and not in the Solanaceae or tomato family. Or plant flowers...

The world of plants and soil is wonderfully complex and simple at the same time and endlessly interesting.

Cheers!
Agony

[Blue Gardener]

2. Nursery tomato plants

May have been the source of the blight that has been so prevalent this year. Bonnie Plants are rumoured to be the culprit. If possible, start your own tomato plants next year.

[bvar22]

3. Thank You.

This is wonderful information, especially the distinction of Late vs Early Blight.
(I have mis-identified it in posts to this forum).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x12169

There is much contradictory information on the Internet (and local word of mouth).
It would appear that we have had a combination of Early Blight and Septoria Leaf Spot this year (and previous years).

We still have some plants producing tomatoes. The tops of the plants appear healthy, but the tomatoes are very ugly....so ugly that we've stopped eating them, but the chickens like them.

We are not going to compost tomato plants this year.
We have plenty of good soil available, and don't want to take the risk.

[ginnyinWI]

5. the tops were green but it stopped blooming

or producing new tomatoes. The tomatoes started out okay but the last few were kind of brownish. And now there are no more blooms or little green ones--so I'm going to pull them up soon. To be on the safe side I'm going to bad them up and put them in the trash instead of composting. Everything else gets composted--weeds, stuff from the kitchen, leaves, etc. so I won't feel guilty.

No walnut trees in the area and no potatoes to worry about.

Thanks for the info.

[Paper Roses]

4. This morning I gave up and pulled the plants. Never had a year

this bad. I have a few green tomatoes that I hope will ripen on the window sill. I think my total yield was 15 tomatoes from 6 plants. I used to give them to neighbors I had so many but this year there were not enough for myself.

Maybe next year.