i got blighted last year too. i dug out my entire raised bed, and brought in all new soil. got 2 yards for $40 of an organic mix. the tomato plants are kickin' this year, but not sure how it will affect the blight spores. it can winter in the soil, but it can also fly over from miles away thru the air. that is not to say you have blight. it's pretty early here in oregon and was front page news cause of all the commercial growers. anyway, it's really best to change your soil if you can't rotate tomatoes. if you're diggin right into the ground, then maybe dig 6 inches down and put up some 2x6's and raise your own bed. you'll be 12 inches from anywhere the spores can get to.

re: leaf curl, tomatoes leaves curl for many reasons. it's not neccesarily blight. also, i noticed darkening of the stems last year before i noticed any leaf or fruit problems when the blight kicked in.

frustrating as heck. now i'm spraying copper phospate this year as a preventative. daconil is good, maybe better, but we're trying to keep our garden organic.

take a look at the pics on tomato problem solver 2.

or do what i usually do... wait for carolyn to answer ;)

Thanks for the advice. Only problem is my soil is in 4 raised beds, and I spent well over $500 to fill it. Not sure I want to empty and refill, but will consider it.

Last year I got blight which permeated and destroyed my garden. Tiny brown spots on the leaves, massive curling and wilting, then yellowing and dying of plants. It got out of control before I knew what it was. This year, I have been spraying with Daconil, but after a two week vacation with no spraying, I saw it starting again on my plants. Many are curling, spots are appearing. I am spraying and cutting off leaves like mad, but I fear it may still be a problem. Two questions: is the curling a preliminary stage of blight, or something different? And second, will my garden ever be rid of this disease? I can't rotate.

Let's back up here and try to determine what the specific problem is.

I take it you're in the western part of NYS and that's inportant to know.

Spots on the leaves usually indicate a foliage infection, either baterial or fungal, and Daconil is of no use if it's bacterial in origin.

Wilting is not a symptom seen with foliage infections.

In our area the systemic diseases that cause wilting are not all that common and if you have new soil in the raised beds then that makes that diagnosis quite remote. Is this the first year with the new soil or if not, did you see the same problems last year in the same spot?

No, curled leaves are not necessarily a prelude to either Foliage diseases or systemic diseases.

Since all NEW folaige diseases are ariborne, replacing soil can't prevent them.

So lets go step by step and let me ask you to indicate what you see as the major problem, the wilting or the foliage disease?

Blight is a general word and deosn't refer to any one specific disease.

If you could be more specific about the wilting as opposed to the spots on the leaves that would be great.

How big are the spots, what shape, what color, any concentric circles inside the spots and any yellow halos aroubd the spots when they appear on green leaves.

I know, lots of questions here, but wilting and systemic diseases are not common where we live and foliage diseases are, but if you have both it's going to take some time to make sense of this, if we can.

Carolyn

I appreciate your questions, Carolyn. Western New York, yes. The spots are light brown circles, very small, mostly on lower leaves. It is also on my other plants (cukes and melons and even a bit on my zukes). In later stages the leaves being to yellow. No concentric circles. I've also noticed yellow/browning on the perimeter of some leaves. All of this seems to be well contained by Daconil. This is my main concern.

The curling I noticed on some plants after they were a few weeks old, even before the weather got really hot. I remember last year the plants that got these leaf infections started off with a similar curling that did not seem to be associated with climate or watering. The two may not be related, but are certainly correlated in my garden. The leaves curl inward along the vertical and sometimes the plant begins to sag and wilt, but not always.

The soil is a couple of years old, but last year, whatever I had literally killed everything in every part of my garden. It got way out of control.

Please help me, as I don't KNOW what sort of disease i have here or how to treat it...

I have two big tomato beds which are progressing nicely. In the containers, i have about 25 plants, and some of them are producing fruit which when it ripens, the bottoms of the fruit are ROTTEN..So everytime i see this happen even to a green fuit, i immediately pick and toss..

For the most part, these are beefsteak varieties being grown in big buckets..I have yet to see a single fuit produce without a rotted bottom-oy!

What have i done wrong, and how or if can i correct it?

thanks.

ruth

Ruth,

What you're describing is called Blossom End Rot ( BER) and it's not a disease it's a physiological problem that appears early in the season and then goes away. And it's a major problem with pot grown plants as opposed to growing inground.

Please go to the main TOmato Forum, go to the FAQ area at the top and read the blurb about BER.

In the future it would be best if you're asking about a tomato issue to start your own thread so that only one issue for one person is in a thread, b'c when there are more it gets very very hard to keep things straight.

if you have any further BER questions please come back here, for this time, and post in this thread.

Thanks

Carolyn

Sorry, Carolyn, and i finally figured it out..now just to get some answers how to treat it..didn't mean to post in the wrong spot.

ruth