The Perils of Tomato Blight

What is tomato blight and how can you avoid it? It’s a class of disease caused by a fungus that shrivels and blackens tomatoes. Blight stays in the soil through the winter and is quite hardy. Blight can also appear from a neighboring crop or even blow from a distant property. Therefore, once blight appears, only determination and time will remove it. Many crops have been ruined entirely, and quickly, by tomato and potato blight.

When you are growing tomatoes, remember that peppers, eggplants, and potatoes can ‘catch’ the blight too. The same fungus affects them all and can ruin a summer’s worth of growing vegetables.

How to Avoid Tomato Blight

When you experience blight in your garden, plant tomatoes and other vegetables in a different area and skip that area for a season. Some gardeners recommend that you take a break from planting vulnerable crops such as tomatoes every three to four years because the blight fungus remains in the soil.

When you are vegetable gardening, there are things you can try to try and avoid blight. Avoid over-watering, because the plants will get the fungus only when they are wet. Be sure to keep the tomato plants evenly spaced and correctly fertilized. Healthier tomato plants with the right balance of nutrients will be less susceptible to blight.

When planning your vegetable garden design, you can consider researching different varieties of tomatoes and potatoes, as some are more resistant to blight than others. You can plant different resistant varieties of tomatoes side by side, or try different ones each year.

If you catch the blight before it ruins the whole crop, remove the affected sections immediately. Also, be careful that potentially infected potato and tomato plants don’t end up in the compost heap.

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