On Wed, 26 May 2010 17:03:20 -0500, zxcvbob wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
Bert Hyman wrote:

In
news:wildbilly-

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/question.php/2006/05/15/
what_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. ----



How about fumigating with trichloronitromethane? It's pretty nasty, but
it breaks down and/or dissipates rapidly. It also goes by the name
chloropicrin.

Bob

Chloropicrin was used by the Germans in WW I, I sure as hell don't want
to treat my backyard like Ypres.