'the plague'
 

It was not that easy as i thought it would be to leave my garden for two weeks in the hand of my tomatositter. He did above average in removing the succelents and watering to my regime in the greenhouse but my explanations could not elaborate on the general hygiene and it seems that the potatoe disease found its way to one of my plants in the greenhouse. I don't blame him because the way the disease is spreading now it could have happened to me too (condens water was dripping above that one plant in the plastic tunnel) but i could have intervened earlier maybe.

I stripped the plant from all diseased parts, what leaves me with a relatively clean looking plant - apart from some black spots on the stem : my question is : should I not risk anything and remove the plant completely or can I go on with this plant (cut out the black regions from the stem ?)

I have used cuprex (containing copperoxychloride) on the rest of the plants - it's not what I wanted to do but I would regret the fact that my gardening season stops here even more...

The rain keeps pouring down and temperatures keep mild, seems ideally for the phyto-spores; how is your region doing with 'the disease' ?

YOu say the potato disease and by that I assume you mean Late Blight, which is P. infestans.

And if that's what your plant has it will be a stinking mass of black tissue in a week or two and I'd get it out of there ASAP.

On the other hand, what's the chance that your plant has one of the more common foliage diseases?

I'd find it a bit odd to have just one plant out of many infected.

Could be the fungal ones Alternaria solani ( Early Blight) or Septoria Leafspot or the bacterial ones Bacterial Speck or Bacterial Spot.

Could you show a picture of the leaf symptoms, or describe them in more detail, or have you looked into the possibility that it's not P. infestans?

The prognosis for the plants and others near it is much better if it's a more common foliage disease than if it's P. infestans.

If it is P. infestans I'd try to protect the other plants ASAP with Daconil, aka Chlorothalonil rather than a copper product. proterction is not very good but the good stuff is not available to the home gardener, at least here in the US. And I mean active against P. infestans.

Without a picture or symptoms, it's hard to make any determination or suggestion.

I live in Belgium too, and I am convince d it is what you call 'late blight', I think you should remove the plant, the weather isn't going to change immediately, and you can save the other plants, I know it's a sad thing to do, but the Ph. infestans is everywhere and really disastrous this year, the farmer next door treats his potato field every five days and every time it washes away,
Frank

Here are the pics :

[IMG]http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/2680/img2530aq0.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/1087/img2531rh9.jpg[/IMG]

this is how the overall plant looks like with the diseased leafs removed - apart from the spots on the stems it looks 'healthy'... so I'm in a bit of a dilemma here :

[IMG]http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/1175/img2532dg4.jpg[/IMG]


happy to receive your diagnosis and cure (euthanasia allowed)

Maybe I can try dcarch'es technique of rooting the top part of the plant ([URL]http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=2532&highlight=rooting[/URL]), remove the (sick) motherplant and continue with the new rooted plant ?

Peter

I still haven"t been able to remove the plant from my greenhouse, so I might be living on a timebomb there but after spraying it with Cuprex (cupperoxychloride) on the fex remaining spots on the stem (all the rest removed) it seems stabilised. Can this disease be cured or is the plant lost with the least infection ? If i root the (healthy) top of the plant with the rooting tip of dcarch is it viable or will it be sick even if you don't see the symptoms on that part of the plant ?