Question

Tomatoes  

More Tomatoes   Our tomato plants tended to get very brittle & the tomatoes have a big problem. I am attching apicture of  few of the tomatoes - hope you can tell me what the problem is!
Regards

Answer
Reg,

With what I can see from the pictures your tomatoes have blight.  This is where the plant leaves, stem and fruit start turning black.  On the Westcoast this is often caused by the plant leaves getting wet and then the blight (blackening of the plant and fruit) sets in.  This is common here and the way we prevent it from happening is to keep our plants covered especially the end of July onward as any rainfall in early August will cause the blight to set in, usually plants will be totally blackened within days.  Never compost plants that have blight and make sure you plant your tomatoes in a different area next year.

Blight can also be caused by overhead watering, moisture getting on the leaves from high air humidity or the plants are not getting good air circulation around them - usually a combination of all three.  If some of your plants are still looking okay, pull any diseased ones out, immediately place them into a garage bag so the spore will not spread, cut back all the bottom larger leaves from the plant to make sure the plant gets lots of air circulating around it.  If the plant is looking blackish and the fruit is still looking green and without blemishes harvest all the green fruit and ripen it in a warm room, check the fruit every few days, as some may still turn black and you do not want to have those contaminate the healthier ones.

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have any other questions.

Happy Gardening,
Catherine
www.your-vegetable-gardening-helper.com