[quickdraw]

I may have early blight. I just yanked out three plants, my best ones in terms of volume. Oddly enough, these were three plants I ordered from an Ohio nursery.

It's so hard to tell, I can walk around my property and see similar spotted black leaves on various trees and bushes. I decided not to take any chances.

BTW my tomatoes are not off to a great start. I think part of the problem was they went two or three weeks without doing anything. They got huge during our heatwave a few weeks ago, I thought they were a week away from being ready to eat, then they did nothing until this week. The ones
that are ready seem to have a lot of cracks and splits.

Not off to a good start. I got a bad feeling.

[vter]

No sign of it yet. We bought our plants from a local organic produce farm. We've got TONS of tomatoes. Want some?

[quickdraw]

Originally Posted by vter

No sign of it yet. We bought our plants from a local organic produce farm. We've got TONS of tomatoes. Want some?

I appreciate the offer.

I just took off dozens of cherry tomatoes from the plants I ripped out. Since it appears to be early blight, if any blight all, I can eat those. I'm about to have a bunch of others too.

We had early blight last year and still had tons of tomatoes until the frost.

Dodged the late blight bullet.

[arctichomesteader]

I'm honestly not sure. I have a couple unhealthy looking plants but, all summer, I've been having issues with a nasty neighbor's grill smoke coming in almost everyday right to where my plants are. I think constant smoke as thick as that (he never cleans his grill, it's coated with grease that smokes bad...), must have some bad effects on sensitive plants. So I really can't say whether it's blight or not. It doesn't look like blight, theleaves and in turn vines are just drying up, browning and dying in spite of proper watering, etc., but they don't have the same look/color as any disease I know of. The plants I have in another location across town, have no signs of any disease and are loaded with tomatoes. The tomato plants here a bit further from the smoke source, seem okay and are full of tomatoes too.


I started all my plants from seed. I grow open pollinated types so I can save seed. It takes more work but it's worth the results...

BTW: last year when I was hit with bad blight issues, I moved all my blighted tomatoes to one location, and the healthy ones at another area, well away from each other. The blighted tomatoes still gave some tomatoes, most of the healthy ones did not get blight after being isolated from any unhealthy tomatoes...

[LisaMc46]

Not here (Lamoille county). We lost our entire tomato crop last year just as the plants were ripening. The blight also killed some of our pumpkin plants. We garden organically so there's not much we can do to protect our garden.

This year the tomatos are so heavy the vines are toppling over. They should be ripe within the next week with no sign of blight. I've been picking my neighbor's tomatos (she's away and told me to help myself) and they are some of the sweetest I've ever eaten. I think the sunny weather and warm July have helped.

[quickdraw]

Originally Posted by LisaMc46

Not here (Lamoille county). We lost our entire tomato crop last year just as the plants were ripening. The blight also killed some of our pumpkin plants. We garden organically so there's not much we can do to protect our garden.

This year the tomatos are so heavy the vines are toppling over. They should be ripe within the next week with no sign of blight. I've been picking my neighbor's tomatos (she's away and told me to help myself) and they are some of the sweetest I've ever eaten. I think the sunny weather and warm July have helped.

Did you find that it took them a long time to turn red after they were full grown?

[VermontLori]

I haven't noticed blight on my tomatoes, although I did have it last year. Both last year and this year I got my tomatoes from Red Wagon in Hinesburg; they're organic and grown from seed on-site. But my pears have a lot more black spots on them than usual, and my prized camper down weeping elm has lots of yellowing/blackening leaves On a positive note, the algae in my ornamental ponds is very happy :}

[square peg]

Here in the NEK we seem to have ripening blight-free tomatoes. Have a few on the window sill now that are good to go. On the other hand our apple trees are not producing this year in spite of glorious blossoms back in May. We had a late season snow this year just as the blossoms and buds were opening. The weather stayed cold for a couple of days and a week later the trees were in full bloom, so all seemed fine.

The quick answer is that the snow and cold killed off any hopes for apples this season, but I have noticed far fewer bees this year as well. A neighbor, who has kept them for years, has been losing his hives over the past few winters from parasites and I wonder if this might also be coming into play.

[looking4home]

I'm surprised to hear about the blight given all the warm summer weather you've had. I know that's not the only contributing factor, but tomatoes do need heat and sun to flourish. Frankly, I don't know how you Vermonters do it. I could never deal with the weather uncertainty, and the frustration it causes in terms of ruined crops, etc.