Mark Anderson wrote in message y.net...
For the past 4 years my dad has had problems with his tomato patch,
a patch that he grows between 14 and 16 plants every year (Zone 5
Chicago). Thanks to the discussions on this newsgroup, it appears his
tomatoes had (and still have this year) blight. The leaves get blotches,
produce one round of tomatoes, and completely whither away and die. Over
the years he still got a huge load of tomatoes and ironically last year
was a record haul however he didn't like how the plants looked after they
produced their fruit and he wasn't getting any secondary or continuous
growth after the first round. So I convinced him to not compost any of
the dead plants this year and move the tomato plot somewhere else next
year.

PS. Beside avoiding splashing with the hose, if you also make sure
that rain will not splash, that might be the difference. And the best
way to do that is to lay down any sort of mulch ( wood chips or leaves
will be fine), and then plant the tomato plants through the mulch. The
lower leaves will stay clean, and you will get less or no blight.