Question
Hi Catherine - I live in Australia; however, I am hoping my situation can really occur anywhere in the world!

It's been a horrible wet and humid summer in Australia this year, with barely any sun.  Somehow, my tomato plant(in a container) has managed to set lots of fruit, most of which are the size of golf balls now.

My plant has been quite skinny and weak from the lack of sun and constant humidity - i've also been flighting a battle against mildew, early blight and god knows what for a while.  However, I think I'm losing the battle - the bottom leaves are showing brown lesions that resemble blight and beginnning to yellow.  I've taken off many branches, but the disease is spreading up the plant.  2 main questions:

1.  Will spraying with the highest grade fungicide available to non-farmers help at all now?  I'm going to assume the worst and that it's late blight or something equally horrible.

2.  What should I be prepared for if the disease spreads to the top where the fruit is?  Will the fruit ripen?  Will it be rotten inside when I cut it open?

Thanks for your advice

Answer
It sounds like blight to me and in my experience once it has infected the plant there is nothing you can do as it will move very quickly throughout the whole plant and fruit. Fungicide spray will not help either.  I would pick the green fruit and bring them inside to ripen (wrap them in newspaper so they do not touch each other and place them in a box in a warm area of your house) or make green salsa with them.  Do not compost the plant, either burn it or put it into the garbage.  I would not use the same soil to grow tomatoes next season either, however you can use the soil for other veggies other than the nightshade family (tomoatoes, peppers, eggpants)

I learned the hard way with blight losing many plants to it.  I live in western Canada and the way I prevent it now is to always grow my tomatoes under plastic cover.  

Sorry I could not give you better news; hopefully you can salvage some of your green tomatoes.

My vegetable gardening site http://wwww.your-vegetable-gardening-helper.com has lots of info if you have any other concerns.  Please let me know if you have any further questions.  

Catherine Abbott