Hooray! Our new online courses are now open!

Fruition Garden Journal

video tutorials, tried-and-true tips + our latest learnings to surround you with abundance all season long

5 Keys to Preventing Tomato Disease (there is no silver bullet, but #1 is close)

Jan 26, 2018

5 Keys to Preventing Tomato Disease

(there is no silver bullet, but #1 is close)

Whether you hope to harvest 10 or 10,000 tomatoes, diseases like Late Blight, Early Blight and Septoria Leaf Spot are affecting your abundance every season here in the Northeast.

Here are the 5 keys to preventing tomato disease:

1. Start with disease-resistant seeds.

Sowing seeds with natural genetic resistance to these diseases is the single greatest thing you can do to increase your success whether you are an organic or conventional grower.

Often flavorful heirlooms have little disease resistance and modern varieties with tons of disease resistance have little remarkable flavor. There are exceptions though, and here are some:

Chiapas

A delicious heirloom tomato that shares the classic tomato genus but belongs to a separate species, so it has natural resistance to late blight, early blight and septoria leaf spot. Chiapas is always the first and often the final tomato we harvest each...