John McGaw wrote:

Is there anything practical that can be done? My couple of container-grown
'Patio' tomato plants produce loads of tomatoes, more than I can use
actually, but they all invariably develop the typical sunken then darkened
spots of anthracnose at about the time they ripen properly. Even those that
look OK quickly turn when brought into the kitchen. I use fresh commercial
planting mix every year so the disease should not be from that source. All
I can figure is that it is 'in the air' since we have had a large
percentage of our native dogwoods succumb to anthracnose in recent decades.
Every year is seems that some plague or another attacks my tomatoes -- I'm
about ready to give up on fresh tomatoes.

hmm, we get some disease and i've never
bothered to spray because it is just a
natural part of things. i'm not sure what
disease it is. i just call it late blight
because it happens after mid-summer. we
plant in rotation each year for tomatoes,
doesn't matter if i mulch or not, or if i
water the leaves or not, eventually it happens.

this year, no fungi showing up yet, but will
be along sooner or later.

open up the air flow, remove leaves affected
as soon as you see them and hope that's it.

if you do not get full sun that is the
most likely problem for a lack of production
aside from the other common factors.

most years 20-30lbs of tomatoes per plant.
beefsteaks. by the time the disease has
affected the plant enough to stop production
we're done anyways harvesting and processing
the tomatoes that make it.

the lack of rains this year is about all
that is affecting things. a lot of flowers
on the plants now. i ring their chimes when
i water.

the cherry tomato plant is not putting on
many flowers. i can't eat them anyways so
i'm not too concerned.

we did have buckeye rot a few years ago.
lost a lot of fruit but we still had some
harvest. i'm pretty sure that was the time
that the disease came in with the plants.
we've not seen it before or since.

our nighttime humidity gets high enough
for dew fall most summer nights, sometimes
later in the season we'll have fogs settling
in our area.


songbird