Almost anyone who has attempted to grow tomatoes has experienced tomato blight. Blight is a fungus that causes the leaves to get spots, yellow, and wither. It eventually infects the fruit which will begin to rot. It is spread in wet conditions when rain or irrigation splashes the soil onto the leaves.
The fungus usually lives in the soil, where it is fairly harmless. However, if it makes it to the foliage of a plant, it can spread rapidly through wet conditions, essentially killing your hopes for fresh tomatoes. Watering at the base of your plant and giving the leaves enough air circulation to dry quickly will cut back on your chances for blight.
What to Do
If you’re not into spraying your vegetables with fungicide, then you’ll need to do a little early leg work to ensure your tomatoes don’t get “the blight.”
1. Limb Up Your Plants
Starting at the soil level, prune any off shoots coming off the main stem for the first 5-8 inches of a 2 foot or taller plant. This allows for air circulation at the bottom of the plant and raises the first set of leaves high enough from the soil to avoid splashing.
2. Single Stem and Support
As your tomato is growing, remove any branched stems, leaving only a single main stem. This helps thin out the plant and avoid cross contamination from leaf to leaf. In addition, support the plant by tying it to a stake or trellis. This keeps the tomato from falling to the ground or leaning on other plants.
3. Prune Interior or Criss-Crossed Leaves
Prune any leaves that grow to the interior of the plant (if there are multiple stems), or cross over other leaves. This both helps avoid leaf to leaf contamination and allows more air flow around the plant. The better the air flow, the quicker the plant will dry after it gets wet.
4. Spray with Baking Soda Mixture
Every other week, spray the leaves with a mix of 2Tbs. baking soda to 1 gallon water, with a few drops of liquid soap thrown in as an emulsifier. This changes the pH on the surface of the leaves making them inhospitable to the fungus that causes blight.
5. Water at the Base of the Plant
Granted, you can’t control the rain, but when watering your plants (in between rain showers), water your plants at the base of the plant rather than spraying them with a hose from above. This causes less soil to splash-up and keeps the leaves dryer.
6. Put in the Sun
This may seem obvious, but the sun’s rays not only help tomatoes grow, they also prevent fungus from growing.
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