Early Blight and Your Heirloom Tomatoes
by John Yazo
Early Blight is a disease that can affect the foliage, stems and fruit of tomato plants. The symptoms of this disease is a dark spots that form a concentric ring with a bull's eye pattern that will develop on the older leaves first. The surrounding leaf area may also turn yellow. If at this stage of the disease the temperatures are high and humid, these affected leaves may die off prematurely, exposing the fruits to what is known as sun scald.
Lesions can also form on the plants stem and are similar to the ones on the leaves, but sometimes they will rot the stem at the soil line. When lesions are formed on the fruit, they can be large, usually involving the entire fruit and the fruit will drop from the plant. Early Blight fungus will overwinter in plant residue and is also soil-borne. It can also come in on transplants that you have purchased, knowing the source where you get you plants from is reliable will save a lot of problems.
This fungus survives in the soil, on debris that are infected and in host plants like the Tomato, Eggplant, Irish Potatoes and Black Nightshade. The prevention of this disease can be simple to do. If you can get resistant or tolerant varieties, crop rotation, weeding properly and supply your plants the nutrients they need to grow vigorously.
If you get this disease in your garden, remove the affected plants and thoroughly clean all fall garden debris. Wet weather conditions and stressed plants can increase the possibility of an attack.
Having a good healthy organic soil structure in your organic garden is a very important part of insect and disease control.
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