Unless you're willing to resort to really serious fungicides, you're not going to get rid of it. Take home message: Once your plants have early blight, they have it. It is a living soup of bacteria designed to keep the infectious fungi in check. *I'm not sure I agree with this last one. Spray the plants with a newly marketed "bio-fungicide," like Serenade.**.Start spraying a few weeks before your plants "typically" become infected or at the first sign of blight.* Spray plants proactively with a fungicide.Keep the plants healthy and fertilized.Steak stems so they're off the ground, but encourage them to spread out to avoid touching leaves. Give the leaves lots of room to breathe.This can spread the disease before you even know it's there. Don't touch the leaves of your plant excessively, especially when they're wet.Leave yourself a "splash zone" of several inches (the recommended amount varies), so that spores can't splash up from the soil onto the leaves of your plant. Once your plant is thriving, trim off all the bottom leaves so they don't touch the soil. Clean all your tomato stakes and cages, etc. If you see any sign of early blight on your tomato plant, you have to dispose of it and the surrounding soil properly.I'm not going to repeat everything that's already been written out in so many places, but here are the take-away messages:
The Rusted Garden: Ten Tips For Preventing Early Tomato Blight: A Disease. I found several gardening message boards incredibly helpful, as well as these two resources: Sweet Domesticity: The Battle of Blight and
Baking soda solution for tomato blight how to#
There are tons of references outlining how to prevent early blight. When it rains, spores can splash onto lower leaves, spreading infection.
The soil around an infected plant will likely contain spores. You can contain the infection, though, and you can protect new growth on the plant. Once early blight hits, you can't really get rid of it. Early blight is spread through spores or direct contact between an infected leaf and uninfected tissue (leaves, fruit, or stems). solani in potatoes, which is essentially the same as the life cycle in tomatoes. This more technical reference contains a nice figure outlining the life cycle of A. solani can also produce spores when temperatures decrease and moisture increases (like overnight!). Germination requires water and relatively warm temperatures. This sucks nutrients from the leaf and leads to yellowing in the surrounding area. The single spore leads to a visible colony (a black spot on the tomato leaf). The spores land on the leaf of a tomato plant and then germinate (become active and start to divide). solani) reproduces through spores that can survive through freezing and drying. Early blight typically hits in mid summer, while late blight hits toward the end of the growing season. It moves much faster and is famous for causing the Irish potato famine. Late tomato blight is caused by a completely different strain of fungi called Phytophthora infestans. The common name early blight is to distinguish it from the much more severe late tomato blight. It is best known for infecting tomatoes and potatoes. solani can also infect potatoes, peppers, and other members of the solanum genus, which includes the nightshade family. The Alternaria solani fungus primarily infects leaves and stems, but it can also infect the fruit. Early blight is caused by a fungal infection. It rained for about 5 days straight, and it was during this time that I trimmed the bottom leaves and inspected the top ones without washing my hands.īelow, I'll describe what I've learned about early tomato blight, its prevention, its treatment, and my own experimental prevention/treatment ideas. I also spent way too much time touching the leaves. I probably did a lot of things wrong that led to disease susceptibility: mainly, I encouraged my tomatoes to get bushy and grow upward in the confines of their cage, allowing all the leaves to touch. A little (a lot) internet research led me to a diagnosis as well as treatment options. 
I trimmed off all the bottom leaves and laughed at my top heavy plant.īut then, bam, the problems started spreading up the plant. After my vacation, some of the bottom leaves looked a little worse for wear. Really, they were green, bushy, and producing lots of new tomatoes. I was so excited with the progress of my tomatoes.
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