JohnnyB60
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Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 11:59 pm
Location: Southern CA High Desert

What is going on with my tomato plant?

The plant has been dying over the last few weeks and I thought it was just the end of season. As I started to cut it all out, I noticed that part of the plant in the back out of view is still growing plenty of yellow pear tomatoes. Some of the plant has the roots completely rotted off and another section that’s still hanging on looks like this:
Image

DoubleDogFarm
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Bumps on tomato stems start as hundreds of tiny hairs up and down the stalk. Hairs can turn into roots when buried underground. Above ground, they form tiny nubs or nodules, also called root initials, adventitious roots, or tomato stem primordial. They are the earliest stage of development of a tomato’s roots.


Most of the time, bumps are not harmful to tomato plants and are considered normal.

The rest is here
https://www.tomatodirt.com/bumps-on-tomato-stems.html

Eric

JohnnyB60
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Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 11:59 pm
Location: Southern CA High Desert

Thanks Eric,
I'm still trying to figure out why this plant died and the one in the same planter behind it is thriving. I haven't really looked at the plant until today because I didn't see any fruit, but when I saw the pile of ripe tomatoes on the ground behind it I realized there was a problem with this plant.

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applestar
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Last year, I had a new-to-me tomato pest which I had to research, and it turned out that there is such an :evil: as "Tomato Stem Borer". First clue was hole and sawdust at base of a couple of tomato plants that were not growing as vigorously as others. The borer killed a side branch and eventually the entire main stem. -- in the entire garden, only two plants in completely different locations were affected.

Are you seeing anything like that?

JohnnyB60
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Posts: 125
Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 11:59 pm
Location: Southern CA High Desert

applestar wrote:Last year, I had a new-to-me tomato pest which I had to research, and it turned out that there is such an :evil: as "Tomato Stem Borer". First clue was hole and sawdust at base of a couple of tomato plants that were not growing as vigorously as others. The borer killed a side branch and eventually the entire main stem. -- in the entire garden, only two plants in completely different locations were affected.

Are you seeing anything like that?
well I didn't notice a hole or sawdust at base, but I wasn't really looking for it. I dug it up looking for something under the surface and didn't see anything. the rest was similar to yours because a side branch died and then the rest of it.
I was looking for those large green caterpillar things like I had last year, but couldn't find any of those either.
Next year I'm only going to grow one plant and keep it thinned out so I can watch everything. This year it was so thick, that I couldn't see anything climbing around inside.
I really love these yellow pear tomatoes and I eat them all day long

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rainbowgardener
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You are the one that showed us the picture of your two plants crowded in to a 4x4 planter. Ordinarily I would have predicted that would have been enough space for two tomato plants since the planter looks deep and looks like it may be bottomless, so the tomato roots could go down into the native soil if they need to.

However, your plants are very leafy. It looks to me like you may have used a high nitrogen fertilizer on them at some point, stimulating a whole lot of big,leafy growth. So then they were pretty crowded in the planter and probably competing with each other. As was mentioned in the other thread, having your plants that dense and leafy and crowded in the center cuts down on air circulation and makes them more vulnerabl to fungal diseases, which may be what happened to yours.

You gave us another clue, though:

" Some of the plant has the roots completely rotted off "

If you really meant that, sounds like you could have been over-watering, leading to root rot, which is also a fungal condition.

I'm guessing you are trying too hard and loving your tomato plants to death! Too much fertilizer, too much water. I don't fertilize my tomato plants at all, just compost and mulch, and if we are getting summer rain, I don't water them. In SoCal, you probably have to water, but once they are well established, water deeply once a week (unless it is really hot and sunny and dry, when they would need more) and keep it well mulched.

JohnnyB60
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Posts: 125
Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 11:59 pm
Location: Southern CA High Desert

I have automatic watering twice a day for 5 min because its in the desert and it gets up 115 deg F during the summer.

I have a 1/4" soaker hose around both plants and I thought I had a photo but you cant see the hose because of the ground cover. It looks similar to this photo:

Image

I was actually thinking about setting another time interval for midday because I was worried that it wasn't getting enough water. could it be bugs eating the roots around the plant?



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