Ive got Botrytis

[mrscorpio]

My first year with a greenhouse and most of my plants are affected. It started on the tigrella toms and slowly spread around the others. It is now on my chillis and peppers.
I have been cutting off affected areas as I have spotted it. I moved several toms out of the GH and two of these were the Tigrella plants that first had the disease. They are now looking better and have some great looking toms on them.

How do I avoid this disease next year?

I was going to wash the GH at the end of the season with ***** and burn one of those candle thingys. Will this be enough to kill the spores.

[SarzWix]

Make sure you remove any dead plant material from the floor, and snip leaves off plants as they go yellow (these are the most susceptible) with clean scissors/secateurs. The worst thing for spreading it is condensation, so try and keep the greenhouse well ventilated, and keep air moving round the plants.

I feel for you because it's started in my greenhouse too, so I've evicted a couple of plants and chopped off lots of foliage in an attempt to improve air flow, and am just about keeping on top of it at the moment [touch wood].

[mrscorpio]

Hi SarzWix
Thanks for that, I will wash my scissors and secateurs when I get home.

I may be having a Chilli / sweet pepper bonfire this weekend, They are affected on the main stems.

The tomatoes are looking naked but I think it is under control.

I have my 1st ever Tigrella Tomato on my sandwich today, at least I have that to look forward to at lunch time.

[SarzWix]

Aaah, right, stems. I have 'invented' something to help them limp along a bit if the stems are hit - get a big length of toilet paper, fold it into a pad and wrap it round the stem, then tie it on quite firmly with string. This dries it out to the point that it can't spread. It's only enough to get the fruit on there to ripening point though I think, but it seems to have worked for me on a cucumber plant and a tomato plant. Good luck!

[mrscorpio]

Loo roll at the ready

I will be in my GH as soon as I finish work with the loo roll.

[lizdocs]

I'm reassured I'm not the only one with this problem. I have just pruned the tomatotes to skeletons and thought I had blight. The good news is it's not blight the bad news is that it will spread to all the plants. My peppers and chillis look a bit sad but I thought that was something different, looks like I'm going back out to prune them too!

[SarzWix]

Keep them as dry as possible lizdocs, only water what they need and try to keep condensation at a minimum. Good luck.

[Rabidbun]

My tomatoes get it in humid weather conditions (this year is starting as it did three years ago, with a main stem affected where I pruned yellow leaves four weeks back on one of the plants). Only thing I have managed so far this year is to slow it down by moving affected plants out of the garden to the gravel in front of the house. Hoping that the damp conditions let up, as I am getting a sense of deja vu...

For my setup it has seemed to be a ventilation issue and leaving all the vents open in the main GH this year has ensured that the tomatoes to get hit were not my main crop (yet). I have also been very careful not to let the leaves get scorched or damaged as those were most prone to it.

At the end of the season where I lost my entire crop to it I only used ***** fluid on the greenhouse and had a slight recurrence the following year, but not as bad as the weather was less humid. Figured that the fluid alone wasn't enough to get it all, if that is any help. Having said that, there's usually some spores around most of the time on old leaves from what I can see, so perhaps it only gets out of control with high humidity levels?

Hope you get a decent crop despite it!

[kentvegplot]

The other thing to think about it temperature - botrytis thrives in cool, humid conditions. So lots of ventilation as the others have said, but also see what's happening with the temperatures - we've certainly had one or two quite cold nights recently, and I had to shut the greenhouse up quite tight...