What Causes Tomato Blight – And How To Keep It Off Of Your Plants! : Tomato blight is frequent and can quickly turn plants unhappy and scraggly. Early and late tomato blight identification is detailed in this guide. Try these strategies to safeguard your plants from these common tomato illnesses so you can still get tasty tomatoes.
What Causes Tomato Blight – And How To Keep It Off Of Your Plants!
Frequent tomato blight can cause plants to become unhappy and scraggly very rapidly. This tutorial covers the identification of both early and late tomato blight. To ensure that you continue to receive delicious tomatoes, try these ways to protect your plants from these frequent tomato diseases.
What Is Tomato Blight?
Two prevalent leaf spot illnesses are called tomato blight and will ruin your tomato production quickly. Tomato blight has two types: early and late. Early and late blight affect plants similarly, however preventative methods vary. Early and late blight can attack tomatoes concurrently.
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How to Identify Blight in Tomatoes
Early-stage tomato blight is easy to distinguish from late-stage blight. Early tomato blight starts on lower leaves. It spreads by soil fungus spores splashing on lower leaves. The fungus leaves dark brown, circular patches on plant stems and leaves at the base. When multiple spots on a leaf coalesce, the whole leaf turns dark and falls off.
The fungus spreads to the middle section’s leaves and then the canopy’s leaves. Later-stage tomato plants with early blight have leafless lower stems and diseased top canopy leaves.
Tomato Blight Lateness
Wind and rain spread late blight, caused by Phytophthora. Beginning in the canopy, this tomato disease steadily spreads downward. Tomato upper leaves develop brown or tan patches from late blight. A pale green or yellow ring surrounds the uneven outer edge of the dots.
The disease causes several lesions on a leaf, which becomes dark, shrivels, and dies. Late blight affects tomatoes too. Leathery brown patches appear on infected fruit. Infected fruit has rot under the skin, so avoid it.
Controlling Early Tomato Blight
Early blight, a sneaky fungal disease, can lie in soil and plant detritus for years, destroying tomato, eggplant, pepper, and potato plants. Controlling early blight is almost impossible once symptoms arise. Tomatoes rarely recover from early blight. To slow disease transmission, prune tomato foliage to increase airflow. Remove about a third of the foliage to thin the plant. Excessive trimming may diminish fruit output.
If administered consistently from infection to harvest, vegetable plant fungicides can prevent early tomato blight. Neem oil, an organic control, must be used at the start of an infection and regularly until frost, like conventional fungicides. No tomato varieties are early blight-resistant, however several are disease-tolerant. Use disease-tolerant tomatoes when possible.
Controlling Late Tomato Blight
Modern late tomato blight is caused by the same fungus-like organism that caused the 1840s Irish potato famine. Late blight is most common in cool, overcast, rainy weather when wind and rain disseminate the spores from garden to garden and plant to plant. The microscopic spores can travel 10 miles or more, establishing new illness cycles.
You can’t eradicate late tomato blight from your garden. Weekly fungicide applications help manage it. Copper or chlorothalonil products suppress late blight best. Like other chemical controls, fungicide applications can kill beneficial wildlife while managing plant diseases. Plant late blight-resistant tomatoes to avoid it.
