Dealing with Tomato Diseases Part II
Over the years, you will find that no how careful you are or how much time you spend in your garden some of your tomatoes will end up getting a disease. Even when you think you can’t cure your plants, at least you can start saving your plants for next year. This is part two of discovering more about the diseases that affect your tomatoes.

Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Western yellow blight is a disease that is seen in the western states of America. Western yellow blight is also known as curly top disease and is most prevalent in tomato patches where sugar beets are also grown. W.Y Blight is a virus that will remain in your gardens over the winter hidden in any type of perennial plant.

The plants that remain in your garden over the winter months, such as the beets, will be host to the larvae that causes this disease and as the spring months come and your tomato plants mature the larvae will infect your tomatoes. How do you fight this western yellow blight? One of the best things that you can do is to turn over your entire garden, pulling out all and any perennial plants and destroying them so that the disease is put into check.

If you have no choice but to leave your perennials in the garden, you can wrap your tomatoes in cheesecloth or put up similar type material so that the larvae cannot jump onto your plants.

Another type of plant disease that we will discuss in this article is Septoria leaf spot. Septoria leaf spot is bacteria that can be found affecting plants all over the country. This is a disease that starts out in the rainy months of spring. The bacterium spreads fastest when temperatures are still cool, from sixty degrees to seventy degrees and during the weeks when the spring rains are still going on. How can you tell if you have this disease? You will see little spots that range from dark to light on the lower leaves of your tomato plants. The later in the season, the more spots you are going to see, and the darker these spots will appear.

Leaf spot is a disease that will kill off your tomato plants causing them to wither and die. Leaf spot comes from the weeds that are near or in your garden especially morning glories, jimsonweed and horse nettle. Controlling how close these plants or weeds are to your vegetable garden and their population altogether will help you stop leaf spot.