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What’s Wrong With My Tomatoes? Early Blight & Late Blight

What’s Wrong With My Tomatoes? Early Blight & Late Blight

by | Sep 22, 2021 | Gardening

Differences Between Early Blight And Late Blight

Causes

Early blight affects tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and other plants of the Solanaceae family. The disease is caused by the fungus Alternaria solani which spreads slowly by air, infected windblown soil, and splashing rain. It thrives in moist, hot environments.

Early blight largely affects older, lower leaves and causes the development of strangely coloured, bullseye-looking spots. If left unattended, the disease will spread to the rest of the plant. Distinct lesions will occur on both the stem and fruit. Eventually, the affected leaves will die, reducing foliage around the fruits, opening the door to a plethora of other issues.

Early blight can also affect seedlings. Dark spots will first appear on the cotyledons and stems of young plants.

Late blight is caused by a completely different pathogen Phytophthora infestans (the one responsible for the Irish potato famine in 1845). Once spores land on your tomatoes, the infection can take hold in an hour, with symptoms appearing in a few days.

Like early blight, lesions appear on lower leaves, stems, and the fruit. It spreads remarkably quickly, destroying the entire plant and spreading to the rest of your garden if not handled immediately.

Conditions

Both late and early blight thrive in moist, high humidity conditions. 

Early blight loves warm weather, but can also survive through winter on infected plant debris or in the soil. Closely planted crops with no air circulation and overhead watering create prime conditions for early blight to take hold. 

Late blight, on the other hand, favours cooler temperatures. Its spores germinate in cooler weather, especially after rain, but lesions tend to develop at slightly warmer temperatures.

Identifying Early Blight and Late Blight

Early blight typically begins with a few tan-centred spots per leaf. As the spots enlarge, they become dark brown and begin to look like bullseyes due to their yellowing edges. Leaves begin to drop when the disease spreads to the rest of the plant. 

Affected stems will develop collar rot – the formation of dark, sunken bruises above or on the soil line. The disease spreads from the stems to the fruit, causing indented spots to appear beneath the skin.

Late blight lesions begin on the edges of older, lower leaves. They start as pale green-grey spots and turn brown to purple-black in colour. A white, fuzzy mould may appear on the underside of the leaves in humid conditions.

Stem damage appears as brown-black spots that will cause the entire vine to die off. The disease causes brown-grey spots with a leathery texture to form on the fruit. These spots appear near the tops of the fruit and white mould will also appear here if conditions remain humid, as opposed to early blight, where no mould appears.

Early And Late Blight Treatment

You may have a chance of treating these diseases and saving your tomatoes if caught in time.  Start by removing and destroying any affected leaves. Apply a vegetable-safe fungicide according to package instructions and continue to monitor the spread of the disease. If the problem remains unresolved, you’ll need to remove the entire plant before the disease spreads to other parts of your garden. To avoid managing problems with disease, your best form of treatment is prevention.

Blight Prevention

These easy blight prevention tips also apply to other fungal tomato diseases:

  • Avoid overhead watering. Install a drip irrigation system, or water the soil directly.
  • Mulch around the plants.
  • Cage or stake the tomatoes to keep foliage off the ground. 
  • Buy blight-resistant tomatoes. Hybrid varieties tend to be more resistant than heirloom varieties.
Dynamic disease control – EcoBuz Disease Pro

Dynamic disease control – EcoBuz Disease Pro

by | Oct 3, 2019 | Birds, Bees & Bugs, Gardening

This particular bacterium, or disease, is one of the good guys, keeping fungal outbreaks under control.

It’s easy to see things happening in the spring garden: shoots peak out of the soil, leaves unfoil, buds burst open and everything grows seemingly overnight. But there is as much, perhaps even more, happening that we can’t see with the naked eye.

Behind that patina of spring colour and new life is a fierce battle raging throughout the garden, above the soil and below its surface, on leaves and amongst roots. Microbes are locked in territorial warfare, competing for space and resources to ensure their own survival and their expansion.

We tend to think of bacteria and fungi in the garden as the bad guys, to be eliminated in the pursuit of a pristine and ‘clean’ landscape, but some of these microbes need to be there, are beneficial and play a vital part in the garden’s ecosystem.

One of these bacterial ‘good guys’ is Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (Ba), discovered in 1943 and intensely researched since then for its properties as a plant growth stimulant and broad-spectrum biofungicide. Ba is a beneficial bacterium that occurs naturally in soils, and is now globally recognised as an effective, nontoxic biofungicide that is widely used in agriculture and suitable for use in organic production. Ba is now available on retailers’ shelves as EcoBuz Disease Pro, offering home gardeners a biological disease-management alternative.

disease on leaf

Disease Pro offers a natural disease-management solution that has no impact on the environment or beneficial insects, pets or children playing in it. It is also residue-free and has no withholding period, which means that edibles can be harvested after being treated and immediately eaten. You can literally apply Disease Pro, pick a fruit and eat it, totally safely.

Disease Pro is an excellent resistance management product, helping to prevent pathogens from becoming resistant to a particular treatment. Due to its unique mode of action it may be used in a program to avoid routine spraying of the same chemical actives, which can result in resistant disease populations that become very difficult to manage. It can also be used in conjunction with and at the same time as chemical fungicides (excluding copper based products).

More about Disease Pro:

The ‘active ingredient’ in Disease Pro consists of Ba (strain D747) bacterial spores, which are mixed with water and then applied to plant surfaces, where they germinate and grow. Disease Pro supresses powdery mildew and downy mildew, and is registered as such on a number of crops such as table grapes and cucurbits (the pumpkin and squash family).

Disease Pro works in three different ways

  1. Disease Pro produces substances (antimicrobial metabolites) that prevent the growth of fungi and other bacteria.
  2. Disease Pro is fast growing and quickly colonises plant surfaces, competing for limited nutrients and space. This makes it difficult for diseases to get established.
  3. Disease Pro boosts the plants natural immune system, which over time improves the plant’s resistance and makes it less susceptible to pathogens.

Disease Pro works best as a preventative spray, applied before the onset of a fungal infection. If you know that you live in a damp area or that your garden is prone to mildew infections, inoculate susceptible plants before mildew becomes a problem. The Ba spores will quickly colonise the plant surfaces, occupying space and resources that the mildew or other pathogens would need to become established. Apply weekly with a minimum of three applications. So get out there and get multiplying those spores!