I just got my catalogue from Johnny's and they are touting a tomato with high resistance to late blight and intermediate resistance to early blight. After last year this seems like something I must try even tho they seem to be expensive, 20 seeds for $4.95 + shipping. But if they do work it will be worth it.
I wish there was something to prevent wilt.
I tried Legends last year, none of them survived even though it was a great year for tomatoes, I suspect that they would have been a mediocre tomato anyway since they were bred for blight resistance not flavor.
I used copper fungicide on all of my plants last year. Copper fungicides are supposed to be safe, the label says that it can be used up to the day of harvest and that it can be used for organic gardening. I only used it when the plants were small.
In 2009 I lost everything due to late blight (I'm in New England where there was a plague of late blight that year). Last year I did the following to prevent a repeat,
1) I didn't buy any plants from big box stores (they were implicated in the 2009 disaster). 2) I started a lot of my plants from seed. Most of the varieties that I planted from seed didn't make it, the one notable success were the Cosmonaut Volkovs. 3) To replace my losses I bought plants from a local nursery. I treated all of them with the copper fungicide when I planted them and then repeated the application every few weeks for the first month. The nursery plants did incredibly well, I had more tomatoes than any year since the Reagan administration. The big winner were the Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes, it's by far the best tasting tomato that I've ever tried, it's almost candy. The plants were prolific, producing hundreds of tomatoes a piece. They starting yielding tomatoes early and continued to produce until late in the fall. I ate them off of the vine and I also made a ton of spaghetti sauce with them.
"Legend"? I tried them a few years ago and was not impressed. The tomatoes were not great, and the blight ate them up just like everything else.
I've had the best luck with "Porter" and "Principe Borghese" (both small-fruited varieties) *if* I gave the plants lots of nitrogen early in the season so they were lush and healthy going into blight season. Or a prolific variety like "Better Boy" and just plan on them getting killed by blight but you'll get a decent crop of great tomatoes first.
I haven't tried using a copper fungicide or Maneb yet.
-Bob
Information from Johnny's catalogue.
"This tomato is named "Defiant PhR." It is bred by Johnny's and selected for: Taste Disease resistance Wide adaptability."
I am sure it is on their web site too.
There is nothing much you can do about blight except hope for a dry season or use copper frequently.
Last year was excellent didn't have to use anything, year before lost everything.
Perhaps a tent of some sort to keep the plants dry during the wet years will work, haven't tried it.
I have. It works pretty well.
Ian
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