
Landscape fabric, straw, plastic mulch or dried leaves are all acceptable mulches.This will reduce the ability of diseases in the soil to splash onto the lower leaves.Cover the soil below the tomato plants with mulch. Stake tomato plants, remove lower leaves and use landscape fabric to reduce diseases. Fungi and bacteria need moisture on the leaf surface to start a new infection, so keeping leaves dry is important.Removing lower leaves also improves air circulation around the plant and allows the leaves to dry quickly after rain or irrigation.This makes it harder for plant diseases in the soil to get splashed on to the lower leaves. Many gardeners will remove the lower third of the leaves on every plant whether they have leaf spots or not.By removing leaf spots early, you slow the spread of the disease through the plant. This cycle can repeat throughout the summer, resulting in brown blighted plants. Under the right weather conditions, these new leaf spots produce more spores or bacteria in as little as two weeks. Keep leaves dry to reduce spreading the disease.Įach leaf spot produces hundreds of fungal spores or bacteria that can be splashed or blown onto other leaves, resulting in even more leaf spots.Do not remove more than a third of the plant's leaves.It is okay to remove up to a third of the plant's leaves if you catch the disease early.Pinch off leaves with leaf spots and bury them in the compost pile.
