I've been battling blight the past few years. I think this year I've got it nailed. In the process of experimenting with single/reduced vining to beat the blight, I ended up with 7 foot tall romas? Everything I've read has said max 4 foot but almost every one of them is sure to top the arbor this year. Has anyone else seen this?
I had some plum/romas go crazy while away on vacation 2 years ago, blew up! So long as they fruit, good deal, otherwise I trim down so much needed water and nutrients get focused on the fruit rather than non producing shoots. Nice set up you got there!
They are loaded with fruit all the way up. I single vined them until they were well established off the ground and then let them bush tying up the suckers into free air space. Seems to have done the trick to beat the blight even as wet as it has been this year. I haven't watered since I planted them.
Besides taking a paring knife and salt shaker to the garden, we do sauce, ketchup, soup, skin and freeze, salsa, etc. We rarely buy a tomato product.
Has anyone ever heard about twisting s piece of copper wire around the base of your tomato plants to keep the blight at bay? I didn't do a garden this year because of the blight, used to put in 60 romas every year to make sauce and such but the blight has been atrocious here. Some say the copper wire tied loosely at the base of the plant will keep blight away.
We didn't have any blight when I built the garden terraces in 2006. I didn't stake or anything just let them sprawl and raked in the maters. But when the blight came in 2009 it came hard and has been brutal ever since. I think tomatoes and firewood might not be all that different, single rows off the ground with good spacing yields the best results. Been watchin this one develop for a few weeks and decided today it was time.
