In article ,
Bert Hyman wrote:

In

Billy wrote:

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.

That's a good idea, even after things might have healed; that would give
us a more controlled environment.

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

They look almost exactly like Fig 1. of the Iowa State publication,
illustrating "Septoria leaf spot."

The pictures in http://learningstore.uwex.edu/assets/pdfs/A2606.PDF
seem to be a little better.
It looks like you have an experiment to do, if you're up to it. Plant
one more tomato where you had your problem and follow the cultivating
practices outlined in the article.

http://attra.ncat.org/calendar/quest..._organic_contr
ols_are_there_for_sept
Fungicides, organic or not, have shown limited results with Septoria
leaf spot:
€ Copper and sulfur are fungicides approved by the National Organic
Program (NOP) Standards. Application of copper is a routine disease
control practice in organic tomato production in the eastern United
States. Copper functions both as a fungicide and bactericide and is
labeled (under the NOP) for anthracnose, bacterial speck, bacterial
spot, early and late blight, gray leaf mold, and septoria leaf spot.
Commercial products like Kocide 101� are used in both conventional and
organic tomato production for the control of Septoria leaf spot,
bacterial spot, bacterial speck, anthracnose, and early blight.
Applications are made on a 7-10 day schedule and the result may be 8-12
sprays per growing season. See the resource Eggplant, Pepper, and Tomato
XXIV; Septoria Leaf Spot by Howard Schwartz and David H. Gent of High
Plains IPM for information on applying specific copper fungicidal
controls. Note that the pesticides listed in this publication are not
all organic. Only some of the copper fungicides are permissible.
----

Other fungicides can be nasty to the environment or yourself,
one, Benomyl, is very toxic to earthworms and you'd probably need a
hazmat suit to apply it.

Are your stunted basil forming black lesions on their stems?

No. The basil doesn't actually look diseased; it's simply not
developing. So far as I can tell, the plants look exactly like they did
when we bought them a few weeks ago.

Well, it's still early enough in the year that we might be able to get
something going in containers or elsewhere in the yard. A summer without
tomatoes & basil is not something I want to look forward to.

I've just about given up growing basil in the ground, the potted basil
always does better. You might take pictures of your basil so that you
can compare them with your plants in a few weeks. Growth always seems to
happen slowly, especially when the plants are small.
--
- 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