Today has been quite literally blighted by my discovering of blight on my tomato plants. I first noticed a brown patch on one of the unripe tomatoes yesterday, and today I spied a number of tell-tale brown patches on the leaves of most of the plants in two of my three tomato locations, affecting both the heritage varieties I've been growing. I'm absolutely gutted as I've raised all these plants from seed and they were doing really well, promising a bumper crop later in the month.
Can anyone offer any help? I'm hoping the blight is in a fairly early stage at the moment, since most of the patches on the leaves are currently only tiny spots. I've moved the most affected plant to the other side of the patio and removed all the discoloured leaves and fruits I could find. I also discovered a recipe for an organic remedy on an American site that involves Castile soap, vegetable oil and baking soda, so I was wondering if anyone had tried that. Other than that, most advice seems to involve Strong Chemicals. I feeling worryingly tempted right now.
This pretty much rounds up an absolutely disastrous couple of weeks in the garden. I also realised today that the reason the kale plants were still being munched by Cabbage Whites is that they can get through the holes in the net. I've put another net on top, so maybe that will help. The runner beans also remain disappointing, since although quite a few plants are now climbing, they are going so slowly that only one plant is actually producing a crop. To top it all, both courgettes and patty pans are thriving, with giant handsome healthy plants and lots of flowers - but not a single fruit has started forming. I had one baby courgette last week, but it turned yellow and dropped off after a few days of especially cold and wet weather. The only thing producing a steady supply of anything edible are the ever-redoubtable spring onions.
Grr, grr, grr.
About Me
- The Organic Viking
- Cambridge, United Kingdom
- In an ideal world, I would be living on a smallholding in the beautiful English countryside surrounded by cats, chickens, black labradors, my naughty but adorable children and a much-loved flock of hand-milked goats. As it is, I'm doing a PhD in Early Medieval History at the University of Cambridge and spend most of my days reading Latin in a library somewhere. But why should that stop me?
3 comments:
Pants to blight!! Sorry to hear about it. Do you know, I don't live far from you at all - between C'bridge and Newmarket. I'll be visiting again!
If you don't want to go down the spraying road - and I don't blame you - you could just try rescuing what you have by removing anything remotely blighted, but do not compost them!
If that also means removing unripe tomatoes, pick and place with a ripe banana - that should do the trick.
Otherwise, I haven't got a clue, but sympathise because there is nothing worse than raising plants, especially from seed, and then seeing them go downhill.
Good Luck!
I asked my mom about blight and she says the only cure is "horrible chemicals" or remove all the blighted bits and through them in the bin. sorry to hear about it! :o(
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