New strains of this fungus are starting to develop and is in part caused by HOME GARDENERS not cleaning up their plants in the fall.
The symptoms of late blight are often brown to black spots on stem or leaves. In humid weather and in early mornings a fuzzy mold can often be seen on the underside of these blotches or at leaf and stem nodes.
If you see these symptoms, the best practice would be to dig up the plants, put into plastic bags, tie them up, and throw them out. If you don't, the spores will lay dormant until next year and if any commercial growers are in your area the spores can spread by wind, or even the humid fog that rises from gardens in mid-winter.
So please help these people who are trying to make a living...
Dispose of your infected plants.
Spores of this fungus (Phytopthora infestans) can spread 20 km or 8 miles.
Late Blight Links
Late Blight Article from the Edible Garden
Travis Saling, our past Edible Garden Editor at Suite101 wrote this article on late blight in July of 1997, but all the information is still relevant. However, things sometimes do change with the way that diseases are viewed, and sometimes new methods of treatment come along too. For that reason, Travis has an FAQ that can update. This page contains excellent pictures of blight-infested plants.
Late Blight - Technical Information
Symptoms, Life Cycle and Management, including growing tips from start to finish. From the Department of Plant Pathology at Cornell University.
Training Tomatoes
Several ways of staking, caging and stringing are outlined here, with excellent diagrams on each method. If you want to avoid tomato disease you MUST train your tomatoes off the ground. Pick a method, and go with it.
The On-line Tomato Vine
Information about the tomato, culture of them, and links to more great sites about Tomatoes.
It is always good practice to totally cleanup tomato or potato growing areas anyway... early and late blight spores can be a serious problems for your own patch. For more information on home vegetable plot diseases, and how you can help control them, see the following previous Urban Gardening articles...
Rotation Planting - Beginner Style
Worms are eating my root vegetables! - ANSWERS
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