This was in the thread on tomato blight. It sounds kind of wrong,
perhaps the author meant fungus instead of virus. But maybe it does
work as a fungicide. Has anybody done a comparison of sprayed and
unsprayed with ascorbic acid?
> Incidentally, if you get virus on a plant, spray with ascorbic acid solution,
> about 1/4 tsp per gal water.
Since I just pulled my first blighted tomato plant, (Siletz,
transplanted under cloche April 1, mulched with straw, overgrown by
its neighbor) I'm interested in treatments. I'm hesitant to use
copper since its toxic and there's lots of tomatos ready to eat.
I've tried baking soda at 1 tbsp/gal in the greenhouse and it didn't
do much.
Thanks,
Eric
Zone 8
Portland, Oregon
Sunny, highs about 80
Nights in the lower 60s
Hi Valerie,
Well, it certainly sounds like blight to me.
The name "brown foulness" makes me suspect late blight, which has a bad smell
associated with the rotting fruit. It is a destroyer of tomato plants and if
conditions are favourable for it's development (cool and wet) it can devestate a
planting as rapidly as 48 hours! However, if the weather becomes hot and dry
the diseases development can be checked.
More common for most gardeners is early blight, which is not quite so rapid a
destroyer, allowing you to harvest at least some of the fruit unscathed.
For more detailed descriptions check out Keith Mueller's tomato disease
diagnosis page at
http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/k/kdmuelle/public/Tomato/diseases/d3.html
If you want to read more of his tomato pages (really good info) try
http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/k/kdmuelle/public/hp.html
I hope it's early blight and not late! Also I hope you get a warm dry
spell, that will keep the blight from developing as fast.
Cheers!
--
Bob Carter - bcarter@awinc.com
Kootenay Bay, BC, Canada - Zone 6b
--
Sussh. Be vewwy quiet, I'm hunting tagwines. Hahahahah.
solution,
I would be really interested in this too. My tomatoes have some sort of
fungus that is apparently very common around here. I have no idea what
it's called in English: It translates from German into "brown foulness".
I'd
say that describes it well. I tried baking soda, but it didn't seem
real effective, so I finally gave in and went for the copper.
Maybe someone can clue me in to what this fungus is called in English.
There
are brown patches on the stems, and leaves will get yellow and brown spots
and eventually dry up. And the fruits get large brown spots on them.
Valerie Hillgren
Mainz, Germany
hillgren@mpch-mainz.mpg.de
Hi Bargayla,
Sorry. I guess I don't know how a virus works. I thought that you
really couldn't effectively treat viral problems in people or plants.
Please enlighten us.
Thanks,
Eric
ps I'm not the person you originally sent the reply to.
Virus is DNA material, and DNA is actually part of every plant cell.. A
fungicide is just some liquid, usually a commercial one, that you spray on a
plant surface to hopefully kill a surface-noted organism.
Bob Carter
Hello Bob,
Thanks for the info. I looked at Keith Mueller's pages and couldn't
really
decide if it was late or early blight, but from the looks of the pictures
it is definitely one of them. However, I'm happy to report that our
weather
has _FINALLY_ turned warm dry and sunny and the disease does not seem to
be spreading anymore. Also, the plants are just beginning to really set
fruit in ernest, and so far the fruits appear to be clear of any spotting.
So I'm crossing my fingers that I will get a little something out of them.
A little over a week a go I sprayed with a copper solution, so I suspect
that is also helping the situation. The company the solution came from
suggested a fairly regular spraying plan, but I think I'll just spray one
more time (today or tomorrow), and then only spray again if it seems to be
getting worse.
I'm chalking this up to a learning experience as this is my first year
gardening here. When I gardened in Arizona, we just let our tomatoes get
as big and bushy as they wanted and put them in tomato cages, and I
couldn't
figure out why everyone here pruned their tomatoes back so severly and
staked them.
Well, now I know it's a preventative measure against the "brown foulness",
and you can bet that next year I will dutifully prune and stake my
tomatoes!
Thanks again,
Valerie Hillgren
Mainz, Germany
hillgren@mpch-mainz.mpg.de
