Tomatoes Dying in Polytunnel - please help

GoOnTaigh

Hi

I'm a complete novice and recently I built a home made polytunnel. I started Tomato plants from Seeds bought in a local hardware and they came up well. I then replanted to Polytunnel, watered regularly and used feed once a week.

Recently the leaves are starting to die and now the main stem is turning back. I've already lost a few plants and I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong, can anyone please advise?

Have you any pics of them?

Is there good ventilation in the tunnel? Poor ventilation and excess watering and bring on blight. Did you spray them for blight?

When watering, I've read that its best to water the ground rather than the plants themselves.

seagull

Sounds like blight. Post some pictures. Best to pull up the afflicted plants and burn them. Don't put them in your compost bin.

GoOnTaigh

Hi and thank you both for your reply

The tunnel has one door west facing always closed with a slight gap on the top and on the east facing side a half door which is always open on the top. The temp inside goes between 18 deg c and 35 deg c.

Boards wont let me post pics as it says I'm a new user, strange as been registered for some time now

I didn't spray them for blight, can is it too late to do that now?

Thanks again

seagull

I think your status as a new user is determined by your post count as well as how long you've been registered. I think if it is blight, and it's got a foothold, then you're too late to do anything. You might get lucky in that only the plants showing symptoms are infected, and you can rescue the rest, but I wouldn't be very optimistic.

twenty8

Definitely sounds like blight. Check them against blight pics on the net. There will probably be a smell also.

I suggest that you need to take urgent action and remove the affected ones immediately. You might be able to save the rest - but doubtful. The problem with a tunnel is that it spreads quickly. It is easy to create an atmosphere of heat and moisture which blight loves. As someone earlier mentioned - in future you should water tomato plants at the ground level not on the leaves as it only encourages blight.

So - remove all traces immediately.Dispose of carefully.
Remove any of the others that show any signs of blight
and watch carefully.

G.Greene

Good advice from everyone, just to add keep the watering regular , as the tomatoes can burst if not , and in line with the good ventilation theme keep containers well separated ! Over a weekend someone else was using my polytunnel , I came in on Monday , containers pushed together to make room for something , tomato leaves not a pretty site , took off all affected leaves, freshened up with new compost , fed them , still got some good tomatoes , but disappointing. Learnt from it tho!