About Blight
Blight is mostly a problem with potatoes and tomatoes. This is a spore-driven fungal disease that can quickly spread and damage crops.
You’ll recognise it by brown patches on the leaves initially, which will then travel down the stems and eventually to the potatoes/tomatoes themselves.
Treating Blight
Assuming you’re growing organically there’s not much you can do about it once you’ve got it, so we recommend cutting off infected foliage as you see it (and destroying/removing from your plot.) This will help to slow down the spread of blight and hopefully you’ll manage to get a crop.
Once it reaches the stems, it is best to harvest what you have and call it a day.
Preventing Blight
- Ensure you leave enough space between plants for air to circulate.
- For tomatoes, cut off any foliage that is close to the ground and try not to get the leaves wet when you water them.
- Water early in the day so that leaves and the very top surface of soil have time to dry out before nightfall.