Tomato Carnage....

DAN WILSON · September 2023

Afternoon all, I have soldiered on with my beefsteak tomato, the crop was massive and to be honest they improved slightly in taste with ripeness. However, something awful has occurred. And I have no idea what about 5 days ago the thick stalks started to look dark and slightly rotten with the leaves starting to wilt. Well over the last 5 days all my plants have wilted, nothing is now growing and all the Tom's are starting to rot. I have three questions. What's happened? How do I avoid next year. Can I compost the affected plants?

?

Thanks in anticipation. Out of interest. It looks very much like frost damage. Its defo isn't, but may help identify the culprit?

pr1mr0se · September 2023

It's blight. I have lost whole crops to it in the past. These days I stick with blight resistant varieties. My Crimson Blush were superb this year, despite the indifferent summer!

scroggin · September 2023

Definitely blight, unaffected fruit can still be picked and ripened indoors, discard everything else but don't compost it. It's prevalent in wet mild years and the spores are airborne so can affect your crop by transfer from potatoes that have blight.

DAN WILSON · September 2023

Really helpful - thank you.

But damn and blast....

I wonder why there is so much disparity in the views on dealing with the infected plants, area, soil, implements etc. Lots of views that compost is fine, lots that say not to, disinfect tools etc. Frustrating as being a complete amateur I have already lobbed it all in my compost heap and am going to have a complicated job to retrieve it all out. Wondering if I can kill it with heat from lawn cuttings. etc?

fidgetbones · October 2023

I put blighted plants in the green waste bin. I do not need any more spores around re infecting next years crop.

fidgetbones · October 2023

If it is already in there, you can mix in lots of grass cuttings in the hope it will heat up, but unless you can keep it really hot for a time, I suspect you have contaminated the batch. Just keep it away from potatoes and tomato plants.

Joyce Goldenlily · October 2023

Blight sores are carried by wind so be careful if you have to grow your tomatoes outside.

Dovefromabove · October 2023

We’ve just had Late Blight on the last of our tomatoes. We put the remains of the plants in the council garden waste bit but if we’d not got one I wouldn’t have been too worried about composting them.

The spores are all over the place in the autumn and proliferate in the mild damp weather that we’ve had. They’ll be in the breeze all over this garden and yours and everyone’s … they always are.

When the conditions are right for it earlier on in the season it can be a real problem … lost thirty heavily fruiting plants a couple of years ago … but this year not a sign of it until ten days ago and we’d already picked most of a fantastic crop.

Just don’t use the compost around your tomatoes or potatoes next year … if I were you I’d use it for mulching the flower borders. 😊

DAN WILSON · October 2023

Thanks for the guidance, very helpful and reassuring. I have 4 large compost bays 1m square so they do get guite hot in the middle if I get the mix right, and have only put them in one bay so will try to keep it hot as long as I can. Also have a new vermicompost heap which won't get hot and put a load of the infected tomatoes in there which is a shame... if I take a year off with the toms/potatoes will any remaining spores be dead, or do they stay live until activated so to speak?

LunarSea · October 2023

For what it's worth, this is from the Wikipedia page on Phytophthora infestans, the late blight organism:

"P. infestans survives poorly in nature apart from on its plant hosts. Under most conditions, the hyphae and asexual sporangia can survive for only brief periods in plant debris or soil, and are generally killed off during frosts or very warm weather."

Tomato Carnage....

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