Death of the Tomato: The Southern Blight

My fiancée's cousin just bought a new house with enough acreage to plant a garden this year. He had asked us if we wanted to have a family garden, of course we said yes! I am the first one to tell you that if it doesn't bark, meow, or talk to me that I always forget it is there and it will most likely die on me!

When I had hanging baskets, I only got one tomato out of it, and yet again I was made fun of, but this time it wasn't my fault! I got word of this disease called "The blight" and thought for this year I would do my homework and see why all my plants died last year and see what precautions to take this year! My findings are interesting! Pay attention so you are not like me and kill your plants!

The blight is by any other name just a fungus (Scleritium rolfsii).If your tomato plants appear to be wilting and have a brown stem , then your crop may be suffering the first signs of the blight! At this point the signs to watch out for on specific parts of the plant are as follows: A white mold (mycelium) covering the stem were it may have turned brown previously, as well as around the surrounding soil. The Browning of the stem comes from a structure about 1/16 inches in diameter, called a sclerotia. The sclerotia will colonize organic debris near the soil before it becomes infections. This most often occurs in a climate of high humidity with very moist soil in a temperature of (85-95 F).

Now, I am not the only reason's plants die! Although once I am done with them, there is not room for control or recoveries, with the blight however thank goodness there is!

Preventing southern blight can be difficult and sometime inevitable but there are a few ways to try and avoid it. Avoiding planting tomatoes after a crop that has harvested previously and more susceptible to getting the blight such as a peanut crop. If one is trying to avoid this, planting tomatoes within the corn crop or where a corn crop was once harvested would be wise.

Recapping the blight I will state, avoid planting with or over freshly harvested crops more susceptible to the blight, such as crops that are soil bound, and look for a brown and white fungus looking substance growing on your crops! If these symptoms are seen in your garden the please do the following in order to prevent your future crops from dying off: Clean your farming or gardening equipment to make sure there are no reminisce on or around it of the fungus, also clean up the soil b digging as much of the fungus out of it as possible and replenishing it with new. A last resort is to spray a side-dressing with ammonium nitrate rather than other forms of nitrogen and use of a soil fungicide at the time of transplanting to may provide some control.