The name of this fungus is called Phytophthora, which means “plant destroyer”. Late tomato blight is just plain bad news all the way around. While early blight is a nasty disease, it’s not as devastating as late blight. Your plants may survive this attack but there won’t be as many tomatoes. The spots will be dark leathery and sunken with concentric rings and it will affect your ripe and unripe tomatoes. When it’s on your fruit, the spots show up near the stem. Spots which are on the stem near the ground can cause the stem to girdle. The spots may start out small and shrunken and as they get bigger they get longer. Like with most pests and diseases, plants which are stressed or just in plain poor health are more susceptible.Įarly tomato blight forms spots on the leaves, which then turn yellow and die. It may not outright kill the plant but it will weaken it and the yield may be smaller.Įarly blight loves damp weather and heavy dew, it can be in the soil, or it can overwinter in diseased plants from the year before if you didn’t clean up the vegetable garden promptly. This fungus can affect almost every part of the tomato such as the stems, leaves and fruits. What is going on? You guessed it: you may have tomato blight.Įarly tomato blight is caused by a fungus called Alternaria solani. The leaves are watery and rotten looking and there is a brown lesion on the stem. Homemade tomato sauce canned and stacked neatly on shelves, stewed tomatoes in jars, tomatoes on salads and just taking a big juicy bite out of one straight out of the garden – you can almost taste it! You go out to your garden to do your checkup and daily watering and see something odd on one of your tomato plants. You have visions of homegrown tomatoes dancing in your head.
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