Tomato blight. Prevention, prevention, prevention

Can’t you wait to finally get some of those tomatoes grown in your own garden but when you look at your tomato plants you want to cry? Brown spots everywhere… Tomatoes are often attacked by so-called tomato blight and these brown spots usually mean the end of your sweet harvest. Prevention is very important when growing tomatoes and proper prevention is a great way to make sure that your tomato plants will be healthy. What does tomato blight or mould look like and what do you need to do to protect your tomatoes?

Tomato blight is a very common disease

The tomato blight (Phytophthora infestans), also known as potato blight, ranks among the most common diseases that tomatoes suffer from. It attacks rather quickly. Usually you will notice growing spots on leaves and also on lower parts of the plant. Infested leaves turn brown and die quickly. But when mould starts to appear on tomatoes, it is usually too late.

Photo: Radek Štěpán

Basic prevention measures

Basic measures include planting plants in a sunny and airy location.Plants should be sufficiently spaced. You should always pay attention when watering as water should touch leaves as little as possible. Wet leaves are not good, especially if they remain wet a long time. Make sure the water goes straight to the roots. If you keep tomato plants in a greenhouse make sure it is sufficiently ventilated and do not water plants before night.

When you notice the mould

When you notice tomato blight you need to take action immediately. The first thing you must do is to remove infested leaves and dispose of them. Infested leaves are a potential source of infection. Use environment friendly chemicals based on natural oils or lecithin, such as Bioton. As for regular chemical sprays we use Acrobat, for example. However, if you catch the disease at an early stage, you may be lucky and get rid of the mould by removing all infested leaves, but sometimes it is better to get rid of the entire plant, especially the mould has spread too much.

Preview photo: Radek Štěpán