My neighbor swore his tomato plants died from blight, but the real problem was 6 inches away
He showed me his garden in Elmwood last Saturday and the leaves were yellow and spotted, so he was already talking about fungicide. I flipped over one of the wilted stems and found the drip line sitting about 6 inches from the base instead of at the roots, so the water never got deep and the plant was basically drowning on top and dry underneath. He moved the line and two of the four plants came back within 10 days. Has anyone else seen drip lines placed too close to the stem cause what looks exactly like disease?
That part about the line being six inches out and the plant drowning on top while drying out below makes sense for the water problem, but yellow spotted leaves turning up in ten days of better watering sounds more like the blight was real and the deep soak just helped the plant fight it off. Blight spores don't need a wet stem to take hold, they just need wet leaves and warm nights, which a shallow drip line would actually make worse by keeping the surface soaked. Two plants bouncing back doesn't rule out disease, it might just mean the strong ones outgrew it once they got proper water.