Looks like septoria by the spots. I get it ( or something like it ) in my tomatoes and peppers. I just try to keep them as healthy as I can. It's the scourge of the nightshade family although many are a bit more tolerant - the nightshade family of plants is fairly large. Septoria thrives in warm humid weather. If there's a "cure" for it I sure would like to know.
Looks like early blight to me. Last year I threw some older tomatoes in my ash pile from the wood stove. A plant came up and it had no blight. I though that was odd. So this year I planted six tomatoes in this big ash pile. They are the best looking tomatoes ever. No blight what so ever. So next year a cup of wood ash is going in each tomato hole when planting. Supposedly blight won't grow if the soil PH is 8. Most soil is typically around 5.5 to 6.5 PH. The wood ash raises the PH.
X2.... That’s interesting on the ash though.... but then again Tomato are very sensitive to any outside influence. Our Tomato plants are looking really good this year, till the last couple of weeks. The extremely hot weather has really stressed them. Hopefully they’ll survive to put on a decent late season run.
Nice! Wood ash is something I have lots of. You say a cup in each plant hole? Any idea if some ash sprinkled around the plant now might slow the damage??
Yes I've read that it has an immediate effect. I've also tried aspirin and baking soda sprays. So far the ash works the best.
Keep cutting off the bad stuff. Don't water with a sprinkler. It splashes the contaminated soil onto the leaves. Flood water at the base of the plant. Give them a shot of magnesium. Put a table spoon of epsom salts( magnesium sulfate) in quart of water in a sprayer. Spray them til the leaves are just wet, in the morning before the sun gets on them. ...oh yea...do this every 10 days. They will perk up within hours and it promotes blossom development. Peppers love magnesium as well.
been raining like crazy here. we only watered a couple times. with a bucket and cup, just pour the cup at the base of the plants. we've been getting ridiculous rain falls...1-4" at a time... Mrs. RD has given the plants Epsom salt at least twice now.
TurboDiesel , the advice given by justdraftn is spot on. The splash from the soil is what is spreading your problem. Tomato plants need to be watered from bottom. I think the reason why the tomatoes in the wood ash did well is the PH from wood ash must discourage the fungus growth, So ash on the top of the soil must be what is helping there. But the problem is, ash worked into the soil will raise the soil pH. This is contrary to what tomatoes want. They do best in soil more acidic, just under neutral. A ground cover that allows water and air to flow can also help a lot. This is the standard ground cover you buy in rolls. Putting a cover over the plants also helps when you are having lots of rain. I wouldn't use solid black plastic for ground cover. I've had nothing but problems with that stuff. Ants, vermin and disease. This should help for most of your problems except for stuff like late blight which is airborne. You can be a mile away from that stuff and still lose your tomato crop in a week when that hits. That stuff in the picture doesn't look too bad, just keep the leaves picked off and disposed of. Wash your hands before touching the good parts of your plants after having handling the contaminated stuff.
Tonight's project: 8 pints of dill relish. So far this year I've put up two batches of bread and butter pickles, the last batch was 5.5 pints. Trellised cucumbers: Not all of the cucumbers are mature yet as I planted them in three succession waves with the last 8 just getting their second set of adult leaves. So only about 2/3 of them are producing. On the very left are some bush champion slicers that I probably shouldn't have tried to trellis as they are bush type. But I wasn't thinking as I was getting them in the ground, I was getting them stuck in the ground. It was late. They've just started and I've gotten a half a dozen so far but they look like they are going to pump out some nice looking cucumbers. There's also some more peppers and some mystery tomatoes (volunteers from last year) in the background. 78 cups of blueberries picked and frozen: So heavy with blueberries this year the branches are bending over, and it is dry. I don't think we've had a half inch of rain in 6 weeks. I didn't do anything to them this year. No fertilizer/acidifier , no additional peat moss, just tried to keep the downspout from the garage dumping rain water on them all the time. A net to keep the birds out .
Heh, my sister in Bridgewater had one of those and it would escape and did get into neighbors gardens.
I have a mole problem in the lawn. Our fence has a large vacant field the other side where they come from. We seem to have a bumper crop this year. Last year I killed 5 by harpooning them with a shovel while they were burrowing near the surface. "Thaaar She Blows. It's Moleby duck"! And several with the scissors type traps. This year it seems they are deeper. I have harpooned only two. One mole,"Einstein" had tripped the traps 5 times without getting caught. I finally harpooned him. The second was "Molezilla" on account of his huge piles but I got him also. There are more. My question is; Do the sonic type repellers work? I am at my wits end!
