Leaves/stems dying from the Top

[Enosbg]

My plants are dying from the top. The leaves are turning yellow, dying, have large brown discoloration on a large part of each leaf, and the stems are falling off. The brown discoloration (not dry but wet) extends around the entire perimeter of each leaf.

Below find examples of the problem. If this is an untreatable systemic disease there's nothing to be done. Perhaps it's early blight which is treatable? Or maybe it's environmental?

I've dealt with late blight before but this is nothing like that. It's happened much earlier in the season and suddenly. The plants have been in the ground for almost 3 weeks. I have several different varieties and they all look about the same--Better Boy, Early Girl, Celebrity. etc. Any advice would be appreciated.

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[Enosbg]

Here are the additional shots:

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[TZ -OH6]

My guess is herbicide or some other chemical, unless it is the after effects of frost.

[rainbowgardener]

Tell us where you are located and what the conditions have been for your tomatoes -- weather, amount of sun, how/how much you water and fertilize, soil type/ fertility, and anything else you have done to them. Were they recently transplanted? Did you grow them from seed or buy them? The better info you can give us, the better help we can give you.

[jemsister]

It looks like what my plant looked like after it was hit by frost. Most of the leaves first felt wet and limp, then they slowly curled in, turned brown and yellow, and crispy. I had to cut all of the branches off, but it was tiny then--just a new transplant with three branches.

It doesn't look like early blight to me. I lost a tomato to that three years ago, and it didn't wilt like that, it just got black spots with rings of bright yellow around them. At the time I didn't know what it was, but later a gardener I know told me it was early blight.

[Enosbg]

I'm located in Staunton, Va which is zone 6. The 22 plants were transplanted three weeks ago and everything was fine. We did have a "light" frost one morning about 10 days ago but I didn't notice any damage at that time. The temperature never go much below 34. I've used this garden plot for several years with good success. The soil has been ammeded with organic matter including composted manure. I've sprayed the plants once with Seven and once with Daconil about 1 week ago.

I'm not aware of any herbicides being used in the area of the garden so chemicals are doubtful. The weather has been cooler than normal but we haven't had much moisture until the last couple of days. I've been watering the plants regularly. The problems surfaced before this last bout of 2 inches of rain.

Thanks for the interest.

[rainbowgardener]

It's the Sevin:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=53026

I know it is supposed to be a pesticide not an herbicide, but we have several people write in here to say that their garden got all burned or even killed when they sprayed with it. It even lists "phytotoxicity" (plant poisoning) as one of the warnings on the label.

(You did read all that fine print on the label, right? Never spray anything on your garden without reading every bit of the warnings, etc on the label and then preferably going and looking it up yourself.)

So why is it you are going all organic with your fertilizers and then breaking out the heavy duty chemical poisons when some bug shows up? Sheese Sevin (carbamyl) and Daconil? What were you treating for?

daconil is a fungicide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorothalonil

Sevin is a pesticide.

Both have very nasty environmental effects, though it is likely the Sevin, not the Daconil that burned your plants.

[TZ -OH6]

Very nasty? Like toxic waste? I agree that chemicals should not be over used, but with the amounts that have been sprayed on crops over the years, there should be an ecological desert out there if they are "very nasty," but there isn't.

You can burn plants with horticultural oils too. It's usually the carrier, not the active ingredient.

[Cola82]

You say that like it's a given, TZ. Do the dead zones in the Gulf Coast not count?

Also, aren't commercial crops engineered to be more resistant to chemical treatments?

[imafan26]

If you cut the stem of the tomato, does it have a brown ring? In that case it can be one of the fungal rots.

It could still be cold damage. Were the tomatoes protected during the cold weather?

The only other thing I can think of is a calcium deficiency. Calcium deficiency would cause the top leaves to stunt and yellow first. The lower leaves will remain green. It will produce a soft rot vs a dry rot.
It is common in soils that have high levels of phosphorus. With high levels of phosphorus, the calcium in the soil gets locked up and becomes unavailable to the plants.

The lower leaves on the tomato looked fairly healthy in the first pictures you took. How long after you transplanted the tomatoes did the problem start? If the transplants were healthy and the problem started a few weeks after the transplanting, I would suspect something in the soil. Even though you said you have planted tomatoes there before, maybe you should test the soil. The balance may be off enough to cause problems now.

[rainbowgardener]

does colony collapse disorder of honey bees not count?

does the disappearance of frogs and toads not count?

Frogs have been disappearing worldwide at unprecedented rates, and currently one-third of the world's 6,485 amphibian species are threatened with extinction.

http://www.ecohearth.com/eco-zine/green ... rried.html

Malformed Frogs authored by the same Michael Lannoo. Pesticides, fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals bear some of the blame. Such pollutants find their ways into streams, creeks, rivers, puddles, ponds and lakes. Reproducing frogs, their eggs, and their tadpoles exposed to contaminates can grow into monstrosities with extra misplaced or missing limbs. Frogs and toads can be exposed to introduced or emergent diseases or parasites that kill or render infertile.
http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/115/the-dis ... -of-frogs/

There are many, many more examples. In all of them, the disappearance cannot be specifically pinned on one factor, because animal species are being submitted to so many insults at once, including habitat loss, global warming, increased diseases and pests (also partly a result of the over use of chemicals), etc. But in most cases the proliferation of toxic chemicals in the environment is clearly one piece of what is happening.

eg

Carbaryl (active ingredient in Sevin) is very highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates such as shrimp and stoneflies. Carbaryl can also damage frog tadpoles during their development (15, 18).

Carbaryl is very high in toxicity to honey bees and can harm beneficial insects (1, 3).
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/carbgen.pdf

PS... I still think it was the Sevin:

Some pesticides, including Sevin dust, may cause the leaves to appear burned, discolored, misshapen,

Read more: Can Sevin Dust on Pepper Plants Cause Wrinkled Leaves? | eHow http://www.ehow.com/info_8748263_can-pl ... z2VkNszdyy

[Enosbg]

I appreciate all of the comments/suggestions but in the end the problem provided to very simple indeed. A little more than a week ago the temperature went down to 34 degrees F and although I noticed some frost on portions of the lawn the garden looked OK--not. About a week later all of these symptoms showed up--brown blotches on stems; perimeters of leaves a copper/brown color uniformly (a 1/4 inch band around the entire leaf); and leaves and stems dying from the top.

There were some suggestions that spraying with Seven might have caused the damage. I've used Seven in the past and I'm very careful with proportions etc.. I've never had any trouble. As I get older my memory isn't always correct so when I checked my records I actually didn't use Seven on the tomatoes but only Ortho fungus control for possible early blight.

A member of the forum suggested it might be frost and it was. I was able to locate a number of photos of damage exactly like I had. Not only did all of the tomatoes die but all of the various types of squash and cucumbers as well as the peppers. The forecast was for temperatures not nearly that low so I didn't pay much attention. What a dummy. What fooled me was there was no evidence of the damage until several days had passed and apparently that's not unusual. I certainly won't do that again. I've replanted everything and I hope I have better luck.

Thanks again for taking the time to comment.