Comments on: A fungus among us

By: Lonnie

Lonnie — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:52:34 +0000

I’ve talked to two neighbors who said they got tomatoes this year. The one thing they have in common: they planted their tomatoes ridiculously early and covered them on frosty spring nights. So their tomatoes ripened before the late blight set in. Next year’s tomatoes will have to go in a different bed because this year’s beds have the blight in them. I think I’ll create a little greenhouse for them and plant really early. What will I put in all that space that I had devoted to tomatoes? Garlic and onions! We eat a lot of both and the garlic lasts so well when properly dried and hung.

By: Lonnie

Lonnie — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:38:43 +0000

We brought very large somewhat blighted tomatoes in to ripen. But I wasn’t sure we should be eating them, even the good parts. Click on my name in this comment to get to an article that says NOT to CAN them. Or better still, look at this page from the Cornell Cooperative Extension:
http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/FactSheets/lateblight/late.htm

Regarding eating them fresh, one of the fact sheets deals with the eating of blighted tomatoes and potatoes and says, in part, the following:

“The conclusion that unaffected tissue is safe to consume if diseased sections are adequately removed is based on several points. This pathogen does not produce a toxin that can make people sick, as a few plant pathogens can do. Plant pathogens cannot infect people. No food safety issues have been found with other diseases that affect tomato fruit or potato tubers. Late blight appears to be like other more common diseases, e.g. anthracnose on tomato fruit and pink rot of potato (which incidentally is caused by Phytophthora erythroseptica, a pathogen related to that causing late blight), in that these do not appear to affect plant tissue beyond the area of infection. Many home gardeners likely often cut off diseased tissue rather than throw out the entire fruit or tuber having found the healthy appearing part of these to taste fine. To date, this practice has not been associated with any human health issues.”

By: joebass123

joebass123 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:00:17 +0000

only got about 3 good tomatoes this year. they were disposed of properly, but still very unfortunate. personally, i don’t think there was enough publicized about this problem in the media in the northeast.

thanks for the info and links though!

By: Kerry

Kerry — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:09:46 +0000

Unfortunately, this year’s blight, once it got started, was devastating and so wide-spread that you couldn’t have protected your plants. I agree that tomatoes need lots of room and it’s better not to water the plants, but this year, even that wouldn’t have saved them. Also, a good trick for tomatoes is, if you are washing out a milk jug, water your tomatoes with the milky water. It is a good fungicide and gives the plants some nutrition.

I too have mountains of green tomatoes. I guess it’s time to get creative with them.

By: Paul Harris

Paul Harris — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:07:00 +0000

Just starting to have the same problem. All of a sudden all the plants are starting to brown and die. It’s very unfortunate. We’re basically picking all the green tomatoes and either making green salsa or pickling them (better than letting them go to waste!). I think next year we’ll be giving our plants a lot more breathing room, and making sure to never get them wet while watering (which helps).