Tomato Plants Dying

stella1751 · Wed Jul 27, 2011 9:45 pm

I've never had a tomato plant die before, but these two are. There has been no new growth in at least two weeks, and the leaves are turning brown. I have two other tomatoes, same variety, that are thriving at the other end of this bed. It has to be some soil borne disease. Rather than go online and try to figure this out for myself, I'm hoping someone can identify the disease for me based on the following photos:

[img]https://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy292/mitbah/sick_tomatoes.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy292/mitbah/sick_tomatoes_2-1.jpg[/img]

The black spot on one of the tomatoes is a hail ding. Both broke their stems in the bad hail storm we had a month or so ago. Then they were suffocated for a while by some pumpkin leaves. I suppose both these problems contributed to a weakened physical condition and increased susceptibility to disease.

Any ideas?

rainbowgardener · Wed Jul 27, 2011 11:06 pm

Does look like some disease condition... hopefully TZ will come along and identify for you which one.

In the meantime, I just wanted to say, I never thought it would happen to you, stella. Are you still doing the AACT foliar sprays? I would have thought that would protect it from this kind of stuff. Still would be good to do as a treatment, since the plants don't look very far gone at this point.

stella1751 · Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:04 am

They don't get ACT as a foliar spray, but they do get it as a regular drink, roughly once every two weeks. This has really got me puzzled. I've had tomatoes get sick before, but I've never had one actually die. There's something seriously wrong with the soil at that end of the bed

rainbowgardener · Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:19 am

Perhaps go back to doing the foliar spray? I'm pretty sure you wrote about that last year...

stella1751 · Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:16 pm

rainbowgardener wrote:Perhaps go back to doing the foliar spray? I'm pretty sure you wrote about that last year...

Nah. That was TopDollarBread. He (or she) wanted me to do foliar sprays, but I kept resisting. I've got this phobia about wet leaves. I think one of the reasons my tomatoes are generally disease-free is because we get so little rain up here. We can go for two or three weeks with nary a drop.

You do have me thinking, though. Doing something would be better than doing nothing at all and just watching them continue to die.

More and more, I am wondering about subsoil parasites. Only one leaf had what might be deemed lesions; the others just gradually turned brown. I will experiment, I think, with different foliar sprays for a while. If they continue to die, I will yank the worst one and take a look at its roots.

I also wonder whether I over-watered. I don't think so, but it's a possibility.

soil · Thu Jul 28, 2011 2:48 pm

if you know the plant isnt going to produce anything. i would pull it up and carefully inspect the roots.

gixxerific · Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:15 pm

Another thing to think about is a foliar spray of ACCT is not the same as just water. You are adding the good guys that fight the bad guys just water invites.

stella1751 · Fri Jul 29, 2011 10:31 am

A foliar spray is definitely worth a shot. I started a batch of tea yesterday for the watermelons and Habaneros, and I'll see what happens with a foliar feeding. At this time of the year, I've generally got a batch going every two or three days.

I saw some teeny, tiny new growth on the least ill one yesterday, just some bright green little leaves emerging. They last had tea about a week ago; I used corn meal in the recipe, so maybe it's doing something anti-fungal. I've got corn meal in this new batch, too.