One of my tomato plants looks like it has a wood stalk.

[Gardener123]

All of my plants are looking awesome except one... The main stem of the plant isn't green, but brown, and it almost looks like the bark from a small tree. Most of my plants are 3' - 4' tall now, and nice and bushy. This one is about 24" tall and not very filled out at all. But it doesn't appear to be dying, either. Any thoughts?

The only thing I can think of is that when it was in my house growing from seed, it grew higher than my light could go, and it was pretty short on light for about a week. That was about the 3 week of April..... after that I managed to get them out here and there to harden off.

[digitS']

Take a look at fusarium wilt damage to this tomato stem: Missouri Botanical Garden (*link). Does that look like the problem?

If so, I imagine that you could hill up soil around the plant and encourage roots to develop above the damage. There are also fungicides. Or, you can just pull it and be thankful that there are healthy plants.

I don't remember having to deal with fusarium on tomatoes. I mean on more mature plants. Fusarium is the common cause of damping-off. That usually kills seedlings, quickly.

Basil varieties can have huge problems with fusarium. There are now resistant varieties to choose from. Enough about that. What do you think?

Steve

[Gardener123]

I wish that picture was bigger, but now that I know the term, I can google it. Hard to tell from that small photo.