Thanks to the wet weather, our tomato plants have developed blight seemingly overnight. We’ve sprayed with copper. Some quick research suggests that a baking soda solution could kill the existing blight. Does anyone have any experience with this as an effective measure once the blight has appeared?
I personally wouldn’t spray anything until I’ve ripped/snipped out any of the affected leaves and stems. On the one hand you won’t have to spray so much and also you limit the risk of continued spread after you’ve spread. I’ve never tried spraying a solution of baking soda, but it’s a relatively low-cost thing to try, even if you fail. Maybe try to spray a small area that is easily monitored first to see what kind of result you get (just a few plants) while you clean out the rest of the affected leaves on the rest of them.
I have the same problem - where are you. I’m in Kingston area. It has affected potatoes too. Important to note to note which varieties of potatoes and tomatoes which are not as affected. There’s no hope of me spraying - once it hit - the whole plant has been affected except fruit…and yield of course…but I’ll try the baking soda keep you posted.
Careful with the fruit @astrid.oasis, if you leave it on too long the blight will make it onto the tomatoes themselves and ruin them too.
I seriously want to cry! Blight is terrible, even with a good crop rotation this year. I’m going to give the baking soda a whirl too. What have I got to lose? I’m mostly upset, because I am getting well known for my dry farmed tomatoes…this year that is a laugh and a half! I’ve already lost my rare Carletons, and now I’m seeing it appearing everywhere else.
Sorry to gripe…these are my babies.
Hey Farmers It’s a hard year for lots of crops. We’ve been seeing some strong alternaria in all of our outdoor tomato plots at McQuesten Urban Farm and just now the first on our only outdoor plot at the Plan B home farm. We’ve used tobacco twice to kill loads of white flies there and have the plants tied up off the gound. We’ve also now used lime sulphur there to stop the alternaria and blight the local gardeners are seeing around. We are losing very few fruit but they’re not as strong as last year for sure. At Plan B we are using lime sulphur out doors as a control with the first signs of late blight, today but haven’t had any alternaria. We treated early on with DE for young grasshoppers and whiteflies successfully. We are also using a comfrey macerate as a fertilizer after to boost the plant and flood the environment. If you have any brasinosteroid you could use that to help the plants by boosting the immune system and willow tea I hear helps the plants make those complex proteins more mobile. Dandelion pollen in water (not fermented) helps, or sunflower pollen. Indoors our plants are fantastic at 10ft high with comfrey extract regularly, dry meal worm fertilizer + fermented stinging nettle + comfrey macerate in october and then compost in march and and early DE applications to keep the young grasshoppers off. We only allow 20 l;eaves at the most indoors. The only recipe I know of for the baking soda is 7 grams to 4 litres water for full coverage on plants, done 4 times over 10 days… Use at your own risk…!! Maybe ask your certifier? Blight can surely spread onto fruit and tubers so spraying lime sulphur is still worth it in. Our potatoes are in great shape with j compost/comfrey/tobacco and no blight visible yet. You can treat the earth with hydrogen peroxide in the spring to kill off blight in the soil’s aerobic zone and can also flood it with bacillus and fungi that occupy the space and don’t allow blight to take hold as easily plus support many plant functions. In a perfect world it would be as easy as writing this up:) Good luck out there!
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@highspiritsfarm123: Sorry to hear that the blight got to your crops. We are in the same situation only the blight and possibly some anthracnose got everything. We lost 200 tomato plants. Thanks for all the good info, esp. @planborganicfarms. We will try that out for next year. Hope everyone can beat the blight!
Thanks to everyone for the discussion here. The baking soda treatment helped marginally, but next season we’ll make sure to follow some of the recommendations made by planborganicfarms, since prevention is certainly far more effective than post-blight treatment.