Tuesday 21 September 2010

Green tomatoes, brown patches

Over the past few days I've noticed that some of the green tomatoes have developed small brown patches. From googling the phenomena the only thing that I've been able to find is that they might have late blight, although all of the photos of tomatoes with late blight on the internet look a little different to the patches on my tomatoes. Has anyone got any advice about what has happened to my tomatoes and what I should be doing about it?

3 comments:

  1. It is strange to have patches on the fruit and not leaves or stems if it is blight which to be honest it doesn't look like to me.

    Could it be sun scorch? - are the patches facing the window as the sun's intensity would be magnified through the glass. If the tomatoes had wet patches this would also magnify the heat.

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  2. We've had plenty of blight around here lately.
    The last remaining Tigerella tomato plant (all at the plot have been pulled up, this one's in a back garden)lost a couple of almost-ripe toms to blight and the remainder may struggle to ripen before the frosts come.

    I've not seen any that look like your picture though.
    All the blight I've seen comes as brown blotches on the fruit followed by a furry white coating.

    If you do think it's blight - get them off and away asap - ditto any leaves showing signs of blight. Act fast and you'll still get a crop, don't and you'll lose the whole plant.

    On the other hand, if it's not blight you've got a slightly trickier decision to make. Keep the fruits on the plant until they ripen, cut out the bad bits and eat the remainder... or get them off and leave the plant to put its energy into ripening the unblemished fruits.

    Tough call in that case.

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  3. Thanks for the comments guys. I think that sun spots might be it as the brown patches are facing the windows and they haven't been getting any bigger. It is also perfectly possible that there was water droplets on the fruits at some point causing the problem...

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