Tomato Catastrophe

I've just lost my entire crop of 20 or so tomato plants to what I assume is stem rot. They all developed dark blotchy patches on the stems, the leaves dried and the fruit was starting to rot. They were all growing outdoors.

My questions are:
1. Am I right that it was stem rot?
2. Is there anything I could have done to stop it?
3. Is it safe to compost the rotting plants?
4. Whats the best way to ripen all the green fruit I cut off?

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

Hello there I am new to this site, but am a gardener. Sadly I have just had to get rid of lots of similar tomato plants for a customer.

1. This sounds like tomato blight.

2. The spores can be spread by wind and rain.... so a lot of it about this year!! Because of this tomatoes grown indoors are less likely to get it (my customers greenhouse tomatoes are fab). Indoors, water to the roots of the plants, not the leaves and try not to splash water from the soil to the leaves. You can apparently spray with 'bordeaux mixture' or 'mancoweb' to protect against infection.

3. Don't compost the plants OR tomatoes...
Don't save their seed for next year...
Don't grow tomatoes or potatoes in the same soil next year
Make sure you clean hands , tools, equipment... inbetween working with the diseased and any undiseased plants you may have to cut down risk of infection.

4. There are several ways to ripen green tomatoes - put them on paper in a drawer with a ripe banana,
put them on paper on a sunny windowsill, or one I heard today, put them on a tray on the parcel shelf in you car which acts as a mini greenhouse! Or make green tomato chutney!

Sorry you bring you bad news, but don't give up - hopefully we'll have better weather next year.

Good luck with the rest of your gardening, Kay

 

Thanks both of you even though the news isn't that great. The British climate is rubbish :(
Dave

 

Come on old chap, stiff upper lip, eh what?

 

Ah yes indeed. I'd be inclined to agree but after losing my pea plants to a mysterious white stain, my tomatoes to stem rot, my onions never appeared and having carrots that were stunted and deformed my upper lip is somewhat sore.

 

Ours went the same way too.
Binned the plants but may try putting the compost on the garden after sterilizing

 

Just catching up on this - I lost all my outdoors toms to blight this year.

I cut off the foliage at the compost/soil level and then put the plants and toms in the green council bin - but the soil/compost I put in the compost bin. Should I be worried about the contents of the bin now?

:(

 

The simple answer Brian is, yes. The contents of your compost bin are now contaminated.

 

Brian - I'm not quite so pessimistic as Dai:D

As far as I understand, the Phytopthora infestans virus survives on living plant tissue, so I think you don't need to worry too much about about putting the soil/compost into your compost bin.
If you think about it, disposing of soil/compost that has been used to grow plants (toms or spuds) that have developed blight would result in thousands of tons of soil/compost being 'dumped' every year and for commercial growers this would be a major problem.
The virus is air borne, so if you are worried - just dig in your compost below the surface and this should prevent any surviving (extemely unlikely) spores from being splashed up or blown up onto your next crop.

My outdoor toms developed blight this year for the first time ever and I lost about 75% of the crop. I put the plants and roots into our council composting bin, but have not dug out the soil from the bed, though I did give it a good blast from a flame gun before sowing winter spinach and some chard.

 

As not being members of the Solanum family, Spinach and Chard wont be affected anyway. And yes, the spores can overwinter in the soil, but you don`t bin the soil you sterilise it using steam or something like Jeyes or Armillatox.:thumb:

 

David, that's helpful - thank you - should I just water it into the compost heap? And won't that hard any soil it's put into later?!?

Dave W - thank you as well - I was planning to use the compost later on to dig into a potato bed - which I certainly won't do given I understand that tomoato and potato blight are similar?

Brian

 

Brian, there is no such thing as tomato blight, it IS potato blight. Also, yes, soak the compost heap, make sure the disinfectent permeates right the way through it.:thumb: