We garden also, and when the tomatoes have a bad year, we grow something else. This year, we are heavy into brussels sprouts, broccoli, and swiss chard. We have a good size compost pile, and everything that grew in the yard, including tomato plants showing sign of disease, goes into the compost pile. About half the volume is shredded tree leaves from the maple in the front yard. Finished compost goes back into the garden plot every spring. I can't say that every plant in the garden is always healthy, but the garden is generally productive despite the insects and diseases that appear every growing season.

Working good amounts of high quality compost throughout the garden soil this fall takes care of most problems for the following year. Turn the soil over well in the process.

The active beneficial bacteria and good-guy fungi in the compost eliminate the harmful fungi over the dormant season. The best of course is if you can make your own but even quality store-bough compost can help. Good manured compost is even more beneficial.

If you can't have a dormant period for the garden then working the compost in now as possible and using it as a top dressing/mulch can also provide a great deal of assistance.

Dave

ericwi

So you're saying you just don't plant tomatoes the next year at all if they end up with disease? I don't know if I could bring myself to have a tomato-less garden! However, it might make more sense if it were only tomatoes that I think are diseased. But there are the beans and the melons, too. I don't know if they all have the same disease so I suspect I need a "global" solution. I'm going to be embarrassed if the problem is just overwatering early on with all the rain. But I'd think the yellowing would stop if it were that.

digdirt

I do hope that lots of compost will at least cut down on the diseases next year. I'm unsure because the areas that seem to be diseased now have lots of compost. I'm beginning to wonder if compost could be a disease-harborer if it's shed by the plants.

I don't have any manure in the beds, so maybe I need to get some really fresh manure at the end of the season and spread it on the surface of the raised beds. Then mulch it deeply to let it cook and maybe destroy some pathogens over several months.

anney,
I kinda feel your pain. I like perfection in the garden and just am not satisfied with poor results.

It would be nice to speak the problems away wouldn't it? Ole Adam brought a curse to the ground and people have been doing this and that to alleviate the problems.

Sometimes after a badish year on a crop, the next year is a vintage year!!!!

Health and prosperity to you.

We keep moving the tomatos around every year, trying to avoid where they were planted previously. They always show sign of blight, late in the season, regardless. This year, we have three of them in the narrow strip of land between our driveway and the neighbors. Sometimes, you have to get creative...Our tomatos are free of blight and any other symptoms at this point. The compost pile is supposed to develop beneficial microbes, and these are supposed to outnumber, and possibly consume, any pathogens that might be present. Finished compost is not supposed to be sterile, but it is supposed to have soil microbes that are good for growing plants. Our compost seems to act that way, when it is applied to our garden. Bear in mind, however, that about 50% of the total volume is shredded tree leaves from the maple in our front yard.

From the link about cornmeal in the first post:
Researchers at Texas A&M Research Station in Stephenville, TX, noticed that a peanut crop planted following a crop of corn didnÂt suffer the usual fungus diseases. Further research showed that cornmeal contained beneficial organisms that were at least as effective as common chemical fungicides. Somehow cornmeal is able to attract a member of the Trichoderma fungus family, which is a good fungus that kills off disease causing fungi in a matter of weeks.

So it appears that corn is a natural killer of various garden funguses. Maybe intercropping blocks of corn with plants that are vulnerable to funguses or rotating their placement are possible solutions for fungus control in garden soil.

Three Sisters planting may have advantages that I haven't been aware of!

I always wondered how cornmeal affected soil pathogens. That certainly sounds plausible to me. We'll try it this summer, and see how it works.

I'm a true believer in sowing wheat in the fall after the garden is done. It survives the winter and gets a great start in spring. I mow it (add the blades to the compost) and then till the roots into the ground.

Dad did this with tobacco (same family as potatoes and tomatoes) because there was not enough land to rotate crops. It must have worked because even after 15 years, we did not have any diseases in the ground.

Mike