Tomato blight and a lesson in spacing
It started as a few brown patches on the lower leaves of one plant, the week after all that warm, wet weather at the end of July. Within four days it was on every outdoor tomato on the plot, and on half of the site.
Blight spreads on the wind and needs warm, humid conditions and wet leaves. You can't stop the spores arriving, but you can make life harder for them, and I had done the opposite: twelve plants in a bed meant for eight, no air moving between them, watered from above in the evening.
What I did
Pulled every affected leaf, then every affected plant, and bagged them for the council collection rather than the compost. Picked all the green fruit that was still clean; most of it is ripening on the kitchen windowsill with a banana for company. The three plants in the greenhouse on plot 13 have been fine.
Next year
- Six plants in that bed, not twelve. Lower leaves stripped as the trusses set.
- Watering at the base, in the morning.
- One row of a blight-resistant variety alongside the ones I grow because I like them.