why have tomoto plant stems gone brown and hollow and tomotos droping off

Hi Keith and welcome to GoY. Sorry you have blight on your tomatoes, there is a lot of it about this year. The only thing you can do is pick any tomatoes that are not infected and put in a paper bag with a banana to ripen. Destroy by burning or binning the tomato plants, do not put in your compost. If the toms. are in pots then bin the soil as well. If they are in the ground do not grow toms. or potatoes there for several years as the spore live on in the soil.

Spot on Moongrower, you could try soaking the soil (if they are in the ground) with Jay's fluid mixed with water, at about one capful per gallon (4.5ltr.) of water.
I lost mine before they even had a chance to form fruit! so you have been lucky to survive this far!

Seems like it has been a very bad year for tomato blight but we've had our best crop ever... of course we go away on Sunday so god knows what will happen then - Ian do you think we should pick all our fruit and destroy the plants to be on the safe side?

I wouldn,t go that far MG but I am concerned at just how bad a year it has been. Perhaps you could pick your biggest/best fruit and leave the plants until you come back?
Good luck and enjoy your trip.

Good idea Ian will do tomorrow evening - I don't want to lose all the almost there ones.

I know how you feel, to have tended and cared for them just for them to go brown and mushy :~((
Just a thought, having plenty of space around them for air circulation always helps, I have known growers to snip off some of the lower leaves to improve this.

Our toms have very few leaves left on them so lots of air around them... I don;t know of anyone near here who has had blight on their toms. but prevention is better than cure as they say. Next eyar the toms will be grown in a different greenhouse in a completely different garden as we now have a large chunk of a neighbour's garden to grow veggies on complete with a greenhouse an fruit cage... B & I are really excited! The land has not been worked in 4 years so was completely overgrown - we're taking pix. and will put a blog up later

That sounds brill and as you say very exciting. lucky you. :~))

Yup lucky us... all B has to do is mow the neighbour's grass once a week or so in the growing season - which is penance for B as he hates cutting grass - hence we don't have any :-)

Lol :~))

yup lol but think of all those organic veggies!

Slurp :~9 (Apparently thats a smilie licking its lips! ! !)

Fairy snuff :-)