Help with disease on tomato

[Orlando2002]

Hello, I am growing some tomato plants from seeds, and they are about 5 inches tall.

I have them in earthboxes, in my shade house, in my back yard.

Today, I checked them, and I removed some leaves with some spots, marks, which they do not look right.

Can someone tell me what is this? and how to fix it?

Here is the link to the picture

https://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/810/tomato.jpg/



Thanks

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[DoubleDogFarm]

What you have is Leaf Miner. A worm between the layers of the leaf.

Eric

[img]https://img810.imageshack.us/img810/1953/tomato.jpg[/img]

[Bobberman]

Looks like leaf mold to me. Air movement at night may help! The lines look like slug crawling across the leaf!

[Orlando2002]

Thanks for the replies. I applied today Nem oil to my tomato and pepper plants.

Do I have to apply something else?

My tomatoe plants are so small, and tender and they already have something crawling on them I am doing something wrong ...

[DoubleDogFarm]

Frank do you see the squiggly lines?

The worm is between the layer, so I don't think any spraying will help. You can try squishing the worm at the end of the squiggly. You may have to remove a few leaves.

I've read, you can have up to 60% damage to the plant and still get a good crop.

Good luck
Eric

[hardland]

I would just remove the lower leaves, which is prob where the leaf miners are starting. I'm in sth FL and it seems you have to just keep the bugs at bay, not totally kill everything. I have some leaf miner issues and white flies as well, but my toms are producing fruit and relatively healthy. An end of season tomato plant does not look too pretty, somewhat haggard, but can still give you some mighty fine toms. Don't be discouraged.

[rainbowgardener]

The pale squiggly lines are definitely leaf miners. As noted, since they are inside the leaves, it's hard to kill them with anything sprayed on, though the Neem may keep more from coming. Apparently the leaf miners are more common in FLA, another of our FLA posters was having a big battle with them.

But all the things said are right, that you can just pick off and remove (I.e. do not compost!) the leaves with trails and that the plant can withstand a fair amount of leaf damage and still be fine.

The brown spots are something else, I'm not sure what, but for now just keep an eye on it.

It's all part of getting yourself involved with the natural world! Your plant is likely doing just fine!

[Orlando2002]

thanks guys for the all the replies. I already removed all the leaves with leafminers, and as I said, I sprayed the plants with neem oil. We will see how they do

I want to add more soil to my earthboxes. when I filled them this years, I used good organic garden soil, mixed with cow compost. I have a lot of earthworms in my boxes, which I think is a good sign.

What do you recommed to fill the boxes? more garden soil? or any other type of soiless medium?

Thanks

[rainbowgardener]

Not more garden soil, which is too dense for containers, tends to settle over time and turn into a brick. I use basic potting soil in all my containers, but you could use a mixture of garden soil and potting soil. Maybe 1/2 potting soil, 1/4 garden soil, and 1/4 cow compost, worm castings, etc.