Hi,

Are you sure it's late blight? If you can post some pics that would be more helpful.

It sounds like it could be late blight but, after 2 weeks, you should be seeing lots of plant death. Also, when I had LB last year, I recall a fetid, rotting flesh type of smell coming from the plants and fruits. Your mileage may vary on that. :-)

Anyhow, if it is late blight, the plants and any fruits are pretty much doomed. Oh, you can probably cut off any spots on the fruit and eat them (LB is not harmful to people), but I can't imagine anything more unappetizing. Otoh, I know how badly folks want those tomatoes, especially after all the time and effort you put into them.

If you had planned to can the fruit or make sauce, forget about it. Late blight alters the pH of the fruit and, if processed and stored, can lead to spoilage of the product, perhaps encouraging the growth of other organisms that can make you sick.

Late blight spores that produce asexually cannot overwinter in places that have freezes, UNLESS you have potato tubers in the ground. Asexually-produced LB spores can only survive in living tissue.

If underground potato tubers are not removed, the spores may overwinter in the potatoes. Since most parts of the country have freezes, it kills tomato plants (above ground plants), thus killing the plant tissue and the spores cannot survive. Potatoes, on the other hand, being underground and not killed by freezes, can host the LB spores. This is why it's important to dig up and destroy infected potatoes.

This type of LB (the asexual reproduction type) cannot be transmitted via seed. This is the most common type of LB found.

To further complicate things, there is a so-far very small number of LB spores that reproduce sexually, and they can survive without living plant tissue. These are very rare and uncommon enough that there is no reason to suspect that currently.

If you get a confirmation on the LB, the plants and fruits should be bagged in plastic and sealed. You can put the sealed garbage bags in the sunlight for a few days to heat them up, which might help destroy the spores, then put them in the garbage. As you probably know, do not compost any part of the plant. This is especially important in your part of the world, where it's warmer.

If it is LB, you have my sympathies. I and many others lost every single tomato plant to LB last year, usually before we got any tomatoes at all. [It didn't infect the peppers, however.] We know how sad it is.

I'm pretty certain it's late blight, I'll post a couple photos I took today, after I removed another big can full of damaged stems and leaves.

Last year I started some plants in April and then more in late June--the late ones were infected but they were not killed and they came back to produce reduced crops in late September and October.

To address the issues you raised--last year I did eat the undamaged parts of affected fruit--and the damaged parts were gross I remember, hard but black and sort of grainy. Never noticed a rotting smell, any smell other than normal tomato aroma. I wasn't planning on canning this year. I don't grow potatoes, that won't be a problem for next year. We rarely have hard freezes, maybe once in 20 years.

Hmm, not seeing an obvious way to post photos in this follow-up. But my plants look just like all the photos I see in sites on late blight, the same spots on the leaves and dark areas on stems and dark, slightly sunken hard areas on the fruit. And then the foliage dies and dries up.

Thanks for the sympathy....it's pretty sad, all right.

I have a friend, a commercial organic grower, who started spraying his plants with compost tea almost daily back in May, and does not have any blight at all this year (about 100 plants). He swears by compost tea as a preventative, says it won't work though as a treatment once the fungus gets going.

Thanks much for your information. I have kept the cuttings out of the compost, been putting them into our green waste bins to be collected and then wondering what happens when they are turned into mulch by the county....not room enough in the regular garbage....we are limited as far as garbage, local government trying to divert more waste into recycling and green waste, which is a good thing in principle.

Can't see how to add photos in a follow-up, sorry.

Thanks again. Tomatoes are summer, hard to give that up....