Oops. The link doesn't work. Here are the pics:

The ones in the pics have Late Blight.

Here is a link that might be useful: Late Blight

Here's another link with more pics:

Here is a link that might be useful: More Late Blight ID pics

Thank you!

My tomato plants look exactly the same. They were all doing very well, large green foliage and setting fruit. Then yesterday I went out after a heavy rain the day before and noticed that half of them were looking exactly like yours. The small green tomatoes seem to be slowly rotting. I pick off what I could. And I cut off alot of stems that were browning.

If anyone knows if these plants will survive I would like to know, or should I just give up and pull them out and plant something else for the late summer.

Thanks
Diane

I think it's late blight (see my blog below) -this is the description I found today:
"The disease creates coin-sized black or dark green lesions on the leaves and fruit of plants, surrounded by halos of white spores. Spots also appear on the plants stems"
Make sure you dispose of the plants properly and immediately (it can spread through the air for miles):

"dig the whole plant out of the soil, immediately put it in a garbage bag and seal tight. Leave the garbage bag out in the sun for a week before sending it to the land fill. Do not compost,it will live in the soil and plague you next year" Make sure you wash well your hands, clothes and disinfect your garden tools too!

I'm sorry. I know how we wait all year for tomato season, this blight can break your heart.

The pics I posted were taken last night and by mid morning today, my tomatoes were considerably worse :( It was amazing how quickly they went downhill. I pulled all 30 of them up and disposed of them in garbage bags. It's just heartbreaking.....and just as the cherry tomatoes where starting to ripen. It is so upsetting!

Thanks for your help.

Where are you in NY???

I agree, looks like late blight. Pure evil. I'm sure the damp NE weather conditions had alot to do with it. Sooo sorry you lost all of your plants, 30 is so many. :-(

Thanks for the sympathy. My non-gardening friends just don't understand why I am so upset....after all, I can always buy some at the grocery store! LOL I was thinking of taking a chance and running up to one of the Amish greenhouses and seeing if they have any tomatoes in containers left. At least we would have some fresh tomatoes for eating. I just know they won't have any of the varieties I started from seed. Oh well. Just having some here will make me feel a little better, even if I didn't start them.

I've never had Late Blight before so I'm wondering, can I replant in the tomato area now (fall, non-tomato) veggies or should I cover with plastic and use solarization? I was also thinking I could plant some buckwheat for a cover crop. What do you think?

BTW, korney19, I am about 1 hour west of Albany. About 4 1/2 hours from Buffalo.

My plants look almost like yours. I have had a few leaves start to turn yellow or brown. I just pick off the leaves. I have noticed brown spots on the stems too. I use compost tea, so I thought it was just some that dried on the leaves or stems. Everything I read says that LB will kill your plants in a week. I have had those brown spots on my plants for 2-3 weeks now and they continue to grow like there is no tomorrow. With all the diseases there are, I can't tell what I am looking at. Most of the browning leaves I have pulled off, have just been after a lot of rain and the leaves are generally in areas where the moisture is not drying up.

I wish you luck with yout tomatoes.
Paul

No need to solarize.
You can plant anything except tomatoes, potatoes, or petunias this year. You can plant tomatoes there next year provided you remove all infected plant material this year. If you have any nightshade growing as a weed around there, try to get it out because it too will harbor Late Blight. Petunias are closely enough related to also be infected.

Late Blight spores are probably still there on or just under the surface of the soil but they can't survive for more than a couple of weeks without a suitable living plant host (such as potato tubers) and they can't survive being frozen. So leave the soil in your garden plot uncovered this winter so it can freeze solid -- don't blanket it with a thick layer of leaves or straw that will insulate it from freezing temperatures.

Solarization may help with Early Blight or other diseases but LATE Blight needs a host plant to survive... if you removed your plants, be sure you leave no signs of them, like leaves or fruit that may have fallen off... clean up any nightshade family weeds that may be around too.

Here is the some of the latest FAQ about the northeast Late Blight problem...

"Some plants may escape late blight if the pathogen does not get on them. However, the chances of this happening this year are very low based on the fact occurrence of late blight is very widespread very early in the summer growing season. "

"This year there will be a lot of wind-dispersed spores with so many occurrences of late blight widely distributed in the eastern U.S. this early in the season. These spores can be moved long distances."

3. Can plants be saved in a garden once late blight starts to develop?

This depends on amount of symptoms seen, type of symptoms, how early in disease development symptoms were found, environmental conditions, proximity to other gardens or farms where late blight is developing, and management steps being taken.

It is more likely possible to save plants in a garden if when the first symptoms are found:

1. There are very few.

2. They are on the leaves and not stems.

3. The garden has been inspected very thoroughly on a frequent basis (preferably daily) and thus the symptoms are discovered shortly after they formed.

4. Conditions are expected to be hot with no rain or lengthy dew for a prolonged period. (uh-oh!)

5. There are no nearby places with late blight that could be a source for more spores.

6. Further development of late blight will be slowed by regularly removing affected tissue (daily cut off and bag, preferably during the day when plants are dry and there will be sunshine for several hours afterwards) and applying fungicides (minimum of weekly).

Additionally, success is more likely if fungicides were applied before symptoms were seen (thus there will be fewer initial symptoms) and spray coverage is maximized by using a pressurized pesticide sprayer to plants that are trellised. Removing extra branches will also help.

Realize that even with an ideal situation (all above conditions met) there is no guarantee that success will be achieved. Late blight is a very destructive and difficult to manage disease. Impact can be great considering that tomato fruit and potato tubers that become infected can quickly rot.

Plants can be killed quickly when late blight is not managed. A spot (lesion) can form within 4 days of when a spore lands on a plant (even faster, less than 3 days, with one strain of this pathogen) and a day later be producing spores that can be dispersed by the wind to healthy plant tissue resulting in more spots within a few days. Lesions that develop on stems are especially destructive. Late blight is not like most other diseases (e.g. Septoria leaf spot and anthracnose) that you can live with unmanaged because the plants wont be killed and all fruit lost.

Late blight needs to be aggressively managed not only to try to save plants in the garden but also to avoid having the affected plants serve as a source of inoculum (wind-dispersed spores) for other gardens and farms. Promptly remove affected plant tissue on a regular basis. Realize that when symptoms are first seen, all points of infection likely are not yet visible.

There is a latent period of a few days between infection and when symptoms are visible. No fungicide can cure tissue that is already affected, and this tissue will produce more inoculum. "

"Fungicides cannot cure a spot that has already developed (disease control in plants is very different from humans). This tissue will soon die, but before it does the pathogen will produce hundreds of spores. The more spores, the greater the odds some will be dispersed to plant tissue that has not received fungicide.

It is difficult to achieve complete coverage of plant tissue with fungicide, especially when a contact* fungicide is used, even with the best farm sprayer. The underside of leaves is an especially difficult area to reach (the pathogen can infect through either surface), "

"After about 7 days the concentration (dose) of many fungicides can be too low to be adequately effective. "

Thanks for the tips, bcday.

Paul, I have read that picking off the infected leaves before it gets too bad might save the plant. I'm not sure if that means before there are spots on the stems too. I wish mine hadn't gotten so bad or I would have tried it. There were spots on more than 50% of the stems so I figured it was too far gone and pulled them up. Good luck with your tomatoes too. I hope you can save them.

Korney19, That was great information. You just answered many of my questions. Sounds like I did the right thing pulling them up and not trying to save them.

I noticed this morning my potatoes are now infected. Sweet potatoes still look okay. How do I handle the potatoes? They are fingerlings so I don't know how edible they are yet. Do I pull them up, tubers and all and discard?

Here are the pics of my potatoes.

I have a ton of horse nettle (solanum carolinense: spines all over, white flowers similar to potato) and jimson weed (datura stramonium: foliage like horse nettle but without spines, white trumpet flowers like garden datura, round fruit with spines all over), as well as a small amount of wild ground cherry and some sort of nightshade.

I have never seen any tomato disease on any of them (insect damage, yes -- probably flea beetles and Japanese beetles).

Do these tomato-related plants catch late blight, or merely act as a host but not show the damage which is typical for tomatoes? [Yes, I know that jimson weed is not a solanum, but it looks just like horse nettle, which is a solanum, so it's difficult to separate them.]

Except for the nightshade, they all grow from tubers, so are difficult to eradicate.

Sweet potatoes are not related to tomatoes or potatoes. They are actually related to morning glories and will not be affected by Late Blight.

Your fingerling potatoes may or may not be far enough along to harvest a usable crop. But don't dig them up just yet.

Late Blight is an airborne disease. Generally potato tubers are safe from infection if they are far enough below the surface of the soil and if they stay there until there are no more live spores in the air or on the soil surface. It is possible for the tubers to become infected if they are close to the surface of the soil or if spores get washed down through loose soil by rain.

If you want to try to keep the plants going for a while, first remove any leaf or stem that has even a tiny brown spot. Then spray the stems and the upper and lower surfaces of the leaves with a fungicide that has chlorothalonil or copper as an active ingredient AND specifies late blight on the label. Better yet, alternate between chlorothalonil and copper sprays. You need an aggressive spray schedule when your plants are already infected.

You will have to inspect the plants almost daily for new spots because symptoms often don't show up for several days after a leaf or stem first becomes infected. So just because you've removed some spotty foliage and sprayed doesn't mean you won't still be finding new spots a week from now. These sprays are preventative -- they protect healthy foliage but they won't kill an infection that has already invaded the leaf.

Continue frequent spraying until the tops are completely dead (not "almost" dead, because as long as the tops still have some living plant tissue, they will harbor live spores to contaminate your potato tubers). Leave the potatoes in the ground for at least three weeks after the tops have completely died and been removed.

If it looks like the plants are too far gone to be saved, cut them off at the soil surface, seal them in plastic bags, and dispose of them in the trash. Don't dig the tubers up until at least three weeks after the tops have been removed and you are sure there is no living infected plant material nearby that might be releasing spores that will land on the potato tubers.

Thanks keeperofthememories. I have a few spots only where a stem comes off the main stem of plant. I don't know what I should do. Overall the tomatoes just keep growing and growing. As it is I have a bush Beef Steak that was only supposed to get 20-24" I guess. It is already almost 4' tall. I have been pulling off any browning leaves. Some of the plants, I think, don't have any brown spots. My potatoes also had a few black spot on the leaves. I pulled them all off, then sprayed Daconil (I think that is the name of it). Today I went out only to see potato plants laying on ground from 1-3 inches of rain last night. I pulled them off ground and tied them up loosely around a stake. I saw online that potatoes with late blight have black spots all over them. I pulled a new potato off one plant to inspect. Looks good to me, other than little tiny white specs all over. I don't know if it is normal or not. This is my first year at gardening. If it is not LB on the potato I at least have a seed for next year if I can store it until spring.

Paul

bcday, thank you so much. You have been so helpful.

Hope you get some potatoes. No way to know if there are tubers of any size there, but it isn't safe yet to dig them up to find out.

Volunteer potatoes that live over winter are thought to be a primary source of Late Blight the following season. When you harvest your potatoes you will always miss a few. So it's especially important over the winter to expose the area where they were grown to freezing temperatures. Once any tubers that weren't dug up get frozen over the winter, any Late Blight infection that they may be carrying will also be killed.

If you collect material like leaves or straw for your garden in the fall, pile it in some other part of the garden, not where the potatoes were grown this year. You don't want to insulate that area from winter cold.

Volunteer potatoes coming up the next season are another reason for rotating your crops. If you plant something else in that area next year, any overwintered potatoes that survive and sprout will be immediately obvious and you can get rid of them before they start spreading last year's diseases.

Hope the rest of your garden does well. :)

bcday, I really appreciate all your helpful advice. Thanks again! :-)