DM— I do not know, if one gets it is pretty much over for the plant, but not immediately. I remove stems and leaves and keep harvesting until the plant collapses; however, I do not can toms from “sick” plants, I use them in salads and with hamburgers. ** I will say that the blight almost never comes into the greenhouse, in the greenhouse it is the leaf spot disease that is more common. We are testing for that as well. I think the farmers use some sort of compound containing copper to combat Phytophthora. I am not sure. It is a bad disease and here it is not a question of “will I get the blight”, rather WHEN will I get the blight.
I feel like I have as much experience with those two fungi you mention as I do with tomatoes. Here they call the Phytophthora "sudden oak death" but it gets into a lot of other plants and shrubs. I use the potassium salts in products like agri-phos to fight it. Sometimes I make it to a tie.
A grape grower in France came up with a ''Bordeaux mix'' which was copper sulphate and lime mixed with water. He sprayed his grapes with the stuff and it made them taste horrible so the passing people stopped stealing them. Then he saw that when everyone else had problems with tomato wilt (phytophthora) his vines were perfectly ok. Zigs has been using this mix for his tomatoes. You don't wait until the problem starts, but spray the crop well before hand - especially if there are expected humid conditions. We used to get a warning when the blight was expected to happen.
To make up Bordeaux mix if you can't buy it you need - 1kg copper sulphate and 1kg quick lime and mix with 10kg water
Yep, that should read hydrated lime instead of quicklime The older recipies say to use quick lime as that was the most readily available back when folk used to make their own. Nowdays you can pick up a bag of hydrated lime at the builders merchants (takes some of the danger out of it) When I used lime for building I sometimes used to "slake" my own quicklime. That involved putting on gloves and eye protection, pouring water onto the quicklime and then running around the corner as it boils in 3 seconds flat When it had calmed down a bit I used to stir it and then leave it for a month to finish slaking. It was so caustic that if you put your leg in it, you'd have a skeleton in a few hours Hydrated lime is still caustic but not as bad as freshly slaked lime. It absorbs CO2 from the air to become Calcium Carbonate again (Quicklime is Calcium Oxide)
The lowest leaves of the outside test tomatos over in the neighbour’s plot have been suffering from the attention of…something. Something has been eating.the leaves of the lower leaves. After a week of checking and beer traps we decided it wasn’t insects nor was it molluscs… what we did see was a waterhoen. So, I stood there on the path looking over the hedge making the peace sign moving my hand from my eyes then pointing at the hoen, then again pointing at my eyes and then again at the waterhoen— you know that international gesture for “I’ve got you taped, mate”. Here was the solution: It has been two weeks now and no more munching. The lower branches were pruned and the stalks tied-in, sorted. The toms need pruning so often this year, as well as tying-in. It seems like it is always time to tye them up again.
Annie— oh, ta. I did not know the English word for that one. While the bird is common here, I use it almost never in foreign conversations. Thanks again.
yes but I hope they produce. They kinda got outta control overnight and I didn't get to prune them properly and they may be too leafy. I think it was the mushroom soil I filled the bed with.
