Daconil, and Copper here. Am even exploring a diluted bleach solution this year. In my area it's plant disease city.

I'm kind of natural here. I use neem oil with peppermint, rosemary, tea tree and lavender oils for the nasty bugs and ticks and skeeters- it just so happens to seem to work for fungicide as well. Or at least I never seem to have fungal problems in my garden.

I don't do "organic". I stick with "safe". MSDS of Daconil shows it to be pretty health-benign and environmentally friendly when used properly. Copper sulfate is somewhat less environmentally friendly but not a serious health hazard.

Actually, copper sulfate is considered to be an organic fungicide as it is obtained fro natural sources - and it is OMRI approved. Neem oil is also an organic fungicide as are any other horticultural oils. And depending on what specifically you are treating, baking soda or milk solutions are organic fungicidal controls but their effectiveness is generally limited to powdery mildew or a few types of leaf spots. Also Bacillus subtilis (tradename Serenade) is a biocontrol fungicide and is OMRI approved as well.

I usually use a biological like B. subtilis and Copper octanoate alternately. However, when late blight is detected in my immediate area, I will treat plants with Daconil as a preventative.

gardengal48: "Actually, copper sulfate is considered to be an organic fungicide as it is obtained fro natural sources - and it is OMRI approved."

I don't think Dan was saying he actively avoids organic things. Just that whether or not it's organic is not important to him so much as whether or not it's safe to use. And he's correct that some organic options are less safe or no safer than some non-organic options.

I use one stem pruning and proper spacing and making sure I get morning sun on the tomatoes. Yeah, not as effective as chemical methods but it does help a lot if disease pressure isn't really bad.

Thank you gorbelly. You got my drift.

I'm trying this year for the first time, as I'm sick of tomatoes getting wiped out by blight!! I'll probably be using daconil, and may experiment with some baking soda mixtures. After my research, daconil seems the best option for me. I'm not a fan of copper, or neem oil for that matter, and serenade is expensive around here. I think Dan pretty much summed my reasons for not using the ones I mentioned.

So many of my family spray with Daconil or derivative (active ingredient-chlorothalonil). It seems to work for them. I have only been growing one variety of tomato the past 6 years (Reif's Red Heart) and no early blight so far. It is an heirloom variety so I just save my own seeds each year for next year's crop. I do not spray any fungicide on them. Maybe I have just been lucky? My neighbors tomatoes get early blight almost every year and our yards are small so their tomatoes are not far from mine. I have to wonder if Reif's has some sort of natural blight resistance?

I will keep my fingers crossed. I do prune up the bottom foliage to knee high each year as my tomatoes grow but that is the only thing I do to help them with prevention.

I use chlorothalonil on some of my fruit trees for peach leaf curl prevention and for cherry leaf spot (after harvest). My only peeve on Daconil/chlorothalonil is that it sure is hard to wash off my measuring spoons and it does separate easily in the container. Shaking the bottle and even getting it well agitated in my sprayer is a pain. It is such a thick concentrate that it is hard to use. I wish they could formulate it in a thinner and easier to mix concentrate.