My Momotaro tomatoes are sick. Help please!

[iacono]

Hello,

This is my first year growing tomatoes and I was excited to find Momotaro tomatoes at my local nursey as I here they are great.

About 1 week after transplant, I noticed the leaves started to curl inward and the veins were purple. Now 3 weeks after transplant, the plant is growing noticeably slower and the leaves are very small. Also, new growth is purple and the leaf stems are curling inward like a corkscrew.

I used a 50/50 mix of compost and soil plus osmocote, perlite, and gypsum in the mix. I water the plants twice a week. The weather has been sunny and in the 70-80 degree range since they were planted.

I took several high resolution images so they are posted on my shutterfly page at the link below. Any help or suggestions from some of you more experienced gardners would be great. Thank You.

IMAGES: http://iaconofamily.shutterfly.com/25

[GardenerGirl]

Purple leaves on a tomato plant generally means a phosphorus deficiency in the plants. This can mean that the soil is too wet or too dry, or that the weather is too cold. Is it getting too cold at night?

You also might try stepping up the watering somewhat: it looks like those are in containers, and twice a week might not be enough for container tomatoes.

If none of those are the problem, you could try adding phosphorus through a fertilizer, but if the problem is in the environment and not the soil, the plant won't be able to take the phosphorus in effectively, and the fertilizer won't do any good.

[iacono]

Thanks Gardnergirl. I will try watering more. I was worried that they could get root rot if I watered more than twice a week since they seemed to be fine with that frequency (no drooping leaves or limbs). Also, I did add fertilizer to no avail. Temperatures during the day are around 75-85 degrees and they drop to around 55-60 degrees at night. Not sure if that swing is stressing the plants. Also, what do you think is causing the leggy and slow growth? What about the corkscrew like stems?

Thanks again!

[rainbowgardener]

gardengirl is right-- the soil in your pictures did look quite dry. Tomatoes in well draining containers sometimes have to be watered twice a day in the heat of the summer (we're probably not quite there yet). The optimum temperature range for tomatoes is 55 - 85, so it sounds like yours could be getting mildly stressed at both ends. If they are leggy (the picture didn't look real bad that way), it probably means not enough light... are they in full sun? The curled and yellowing leaves could be some kind of blight or wilt, ie fungal problem. Here's a site with pictures of a lot of different conditions to try to help you identify yours
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publ ... lver/leaf/

Blossoms falling off without setting fruit is called blossom drop. Type that into the search box at upper left to see what's been written here about that. It's generally a sign of stress in the plant, but could be any of a variety of kinds of stress...