In article ,
Bert Hyman wrote:

My wife and I are absolutely not knowledgeable gardeners; our back yard is
planted with perennials and shrubs selected mainly for appearance,
hardiness and whim (I got three gas plants, based solely on their name),
and we manage to keep things alive and pruned to our satisfaction.

A few years ago, we set aside the one small sunny spot for growing
tomatoes and basil. Each year we've tilled the area by hand, worked in
some manure-based soil amendment, planted a few plants we picked up at
the garden center and were happy with the result.

This year, the tomatoes died, and the basil is stunted.

My suspicion, and the consensus at my wife's office, is that we
introduced some sort of blight, either from the purchased plants or the
soil amendment.

What can we do to this plot of death so that we might get something to
grow next year? Is there any quick fix for this year? Our growing season
is terribly short here.

I'm guessing that your plot is screwed for 3 to 5 years. In any event,
the only thing you can do with confidence is to lay down a sheet of
fairly thick vinyl and put a raised garden on the site with fresh soil.
Do you have any pictures of the tomatoes and basil, or can you describe
how they looked? Did your tomatoes look like
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetablepatch/a/TomatoProblems.htm
or
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/publications/pm1266.pdf

Are your stunted basil forming black lesions on their stems?
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html