The top picture is actually a different plant. A smaller one, different variety. But since all but one, maybe two, out of six seem to have whatever these spots are, I figured I'd include that one. The others are all my black prince, the one this all began with. I actually sprayed neem oil yesterday on the suggestion of someone at the garden center. I treated all the tomatoes, even the ones seemingly not affected. But, go figure, it decided to rain. I don't know when it started, last night or this morning. I'm hoping the neem had time to dry. If it is septoria, can it be stopped/cured or whatnot?Lindsaylew82 wrote:Well the top picture....that might be blight? Is that at the top of the plant?
Okay, so keep treating for fungus and remove as many of the affected leaves, even if it's pretty much entire large stems? I mean, this spread very fast. And hit all but like, two plants. I'll see if I can find some good compost. I only just started my bin so I probably won't have any until next spring at the earliest. I just hate the idea of taking pretty much everything in the way of foliage and stems, including vines that are about to flower.Lindsaylew82 wrote:A weeks worth of rain can mean an absolute wreck here in the south.
Blight is also fungal. Just do the best you can at removing the bad looking leaves. You may have to remove a LOT! Just cut them off close to the main stem. You will likely get healthy grow back starting close to the bottom. They're sucker sprouts. I keep them on indeterminates because IME, they give me more produce. Some people cut them off though, too. Be diligent in your regimen. Consistently treating for fungus is key. You stop, it roars! It's just part of the area we live in!
If you can find some really good compost, and an aquarium aerating system with a flexible bubble wand, you can very easily make aerated compost tea. There are some REALLY GOOD threads here about it. Definitely worth looking into!
The top photo you said it looked like the patches had a yellow halo but they don't in person, to my eyes anyway. And the other photos, the ones of the same plant, those are some of the older, more affected leaves I could find. The worst of them are actually closer to the center of the plant more than anything.imafan26 wrote:I think it could be a mix. It looks like bacterial speck or spot to me. But the top picture looks like the patches are more irregular with a yellow halo. The spots are mostly along the leaf margins and working their way in. I can't tell if the patches are between the veins.
I don't think it is septoria spot. Septoria spots are usually larger and rounder with a light center and fruiting bodies from the fungi in the center.
"The foliar symptoms of speck consist of small (1/8-1/4 in.) black lesions, often with a discrete yellow halo . The lesions of bacterial spot are similar, but tend to have a greasy appearance, whereas those of speck do not. Speck seems to curl the leaves more severely than spot." ( vegetablemdonline: Bacterial diseases of tomato)
The top leaf does look like early blight or bacterial spot with the halo
The ones with the small specks look more like bacterial speck. Early signs of bacterial spot and speck may not have the yellow halo, but the halo can develop later.
https://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... omato1.pdf
https://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... terial.htm
https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/vege ... er/leaves/
It is actually not all that easy to identify the differences between the different diseases unless you encounter them enough to tell them apart.
The bacterial diseases are usually seed borne and are transmitted by infected seed. If you are getting your tomatoes from the same place and one tomato has it, the rest probably do as well. The grower may not know himself since he is probably buying seeds from somewhere else. The seeds will look fine when they are planted.
Fungal diseases are from the humid wet weather. Preventive fungicides will help. But you need to start early.
It is also important to rotate your crops to a different family or a different location if you are having problems. You may not have the best location for the plant and it might do better somewhere else. If there was a problem with a disease you have to wait for the disease to dissipate before you bring in a susceptible crop.
Basically if the humidity is high or it has been raining for long periods of time and the leaves are not having time to dry, you need to use preventive antifungal sprays to stay ahead of the game. Sometimes it helps but if it rains for weeks, sometimes it can be hard to keep the plants healthy. Avoid overhead watering. If it starts raining for weeks at a time. I usually just pull my plants and start over after the weather system has passed. I learned the hard way that once the plants go down the slippery slope it is better to let them go. I do have the advantage of a long growing season so it helps and the tropical tomatoes have more disease resistance built into them. In the South, try the Louisiana Creole tomato or go with cherry tomatoes, they are just naturally heartier.
You can still learn from your failures. Keep a garden journal and try to keep a record of environmental conditions. It is how I learned when the best times to plant each crop. The best temperatures, time of the year. I still really could not predict when the storms would be coming but I know in El Nino years it will be drier in the winter and wetter in the summer for me so I can plant earlier because it is warmer and drier and in winter, I will have more fungal issues because of higher humidity, higher temperatures and more rain days than normal in summer. I know if the humidity is high and it is raining almost every night, I have to fungicide weekly all of the plants that are susceptible like the roses and tomatoes preventively. I also know that right now the spider mites are out in force and I have a few white flies (actually my plants were fine, but someone brought in peppers for the sale and I ended up with the leftovers and I think he has a problem with white flies because they were mostly on his plants). I have had a lot of failures with tomatoes, not so much with growing them, but with them not living up to their catalog descriptions. I just did not like them much. I have learned to read catalogs better. I check out the reviews on Tatiana's tomatobase and Dave's garden. If the catalog says the flavor is excellent or tart sweet, it gives you an idea that it is a pretty good tomato. If disease resistance is mentioned but not flavor it is probably not that great. If flavor is "good", it is probably not really great but passable. Applestar has grown and reviewed a lot of tomatoes but I cannot grow most of them because they don't have the heat tolerance or disease resistance I need for them to survive. With tomatoes, it really is an adventure to wade through the hundreds, maybe thousands that are available to find the ones that will do well in your garden and have a taste that you like.
My favorites are sungold, sunsugar, sugary, red current, brandywine (required weekly fungicides and had to be in a pot on a raised bench to prevent nematodes), sweet mojo, New Big Dwarf (tree type tomato, compact with large fruit for its size with good flavor) Lucky cross ( like brandywine a very big plant with big flavor , Brandywine is a parent)
In any case good sanitation is a must. Get rid of the leaves and debris as soon as you see signs. Make sure you wash tools and hands that come in contact with the diseased parts so you don't tranfer the bacteria to the uninfected parts or plants. Surface infections are not that bad, but once there are signs of systemic infection, it is better to just get rid of the plant since the fruit are likely to show symptoms as well. You don't want them to multiply. Field sanitation is also recommended. Try not to plant susceptible crops in the same spot for a couple of years.
Make sure you get healthy plants and certified seeds. I know you started from seedlings but if you start earlier indoors you can look for suppliers who can guarantee their seeds and there are treatments you can use to sterilize the seeds before you plant them.
https://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homega ... e7af3.html
https://ag.umass.edu/services/hot-water-seed-treatment
Hmmm it seems we're in a very similar area, with me in NC and your SC location. Both zone 7b. I will be gardening in Texas again in a year or so but then I'll be combating heat and whatever other pests Texas brings.Lindsaylew82 wrote:It is IMPOSSIBLE for me prevent by rotation. Most of these things linger in the soil for years.... More than 1 season. Likely more than 2... There are wild hosts that are prone to these diseases that grow pretty much everywhere.... Point is, I'll always be waging the war...just like I always have!
I will tell you, Black Prince was not happy here, and completely got wilt. I pulled it, and chose not to replant it here.
I do eventually get blight. I eventually get septoria every year. (I don't have TOO much trouble with bacterial diseases (Lordy, let me go find some wood to knock on!!!) anyway, there isn't really much I can do, except fight the battles. I'd like to think I've been fairly successful! I get a good crop. I save seed every year, in the hopes that I'll eventually have more disease resistance. I don't grow based on resistance, I grow based on flavor. If a plant just flat out refuses to grow here, I give up on it, and try something new, but similar.
I wouldn't pull your plants just yet. While Texas is warm, you can't grow thing year round like you can in Hawaii. I would do a very serious prune job. Keep with the neem oil, and just see what happens.
I think your rotation plan is nice. But here, as far as disease, unless you are talking fields, it ain't gonna mean much. Fungal spores fly, just like my dreams of a fungusless garden!
Hope you get a little more arid!
No grasshopper type legs. It was small, and I couldn't see its legs. It flew off if I tried to catch it.applestar wrote:I think the first one is a katydid juvenile, though we're only seeing the front end. Did it have "grass hopper" back legs?
I haven't noticed any but I have been so focused on the foliage. I probably wouldn't have noticed the bugs if I hadn't been pruning.applestar wrote:OK, if it was tiny, it may have been a leafhopper. Have you noticed what looks like blob of spittle (bunch of tiny bubbles) on plant stems? Usually a bit lower down? This is called "spittle bug" and is a hiding place for leafhopper juvie that can't fly yet. They suck on plant juices.
If you rub off the "spittle" -- slimy, sticky -- and examine, you will find green or yellow soft bodied nymph in there.
It definitely didn't look all spotty when I got it. And it started with one before others were hit. Bit I DID find an aphid on the plant. Where there's one, there's bound to be more. I had someone tell me it looked like aphid damage. Either way, I don't want the damaged leaves there because they'll just die anyway. So I cut it back, and we'll let new growth decide if black prince will stay. But I won't expect much of a yield from it at all.Lindsaylew82 wrote:The reason I tend to lean toward septoria, is because she has had so much rain. Fungal issues develop here after a good 2-3 days of rain and cloudy cover, and she has had a week's worth.
After reading up more, and looking at dozens of pictures, the two look (and live and spread) very similarly.
I keep seeing one key factor in bacterial spot. That is: if the bacteria is seed borne, the smaller seedlings show obvious sign of BS. Not so with septoria, although, it's a little early here to be seeing signs yet. Did your seedling/transplant look like that when you got them?
If you're suggesting pulling plants, that means nothing tomato can be grown there for some time.... From what I've read on BS, it can stay in the soil for up to 3 years. I say if nothing can be grown there next year, and the next, and the next anyway, why not let the plants grow, and see what happens this year. I think if things dry out, and it is something fungal, you may start seeing results. Not so if pull a plant based on something that isn't proven.
(I would still grow plants next year though, if it were me... If I can't grow tomatoes, I don't care to grow...)
Yikes! The one I aw was a green aphid. Bit the guy on my other forum said what most likely happened was aphids snacked on the leaves and then the week of rain caused a fungus to set in at the spots of damage. Which makes sense to me. So I'll treat with the neem oil and some soap and hope no more/minimal damage happens. But all the rain seems to be drowning my pepper plants in too much water. Not a lot I can do about that. The soil can only drain so fast. And it's sandier than I'd like so it drains almost too well most days. I was only watering my peppers when it looked like they were close to wilting. But it looks like my starts that I started too late (but was going to grow in containers) may be my main peppers.
I totally forgot about milk! A 1:1 milk/water solution added to zucchini also makes them grow HUGE. I'll have to go spray everything. But it's pretty pointless if the rain is gonna wash it away. So hopefully there will be some sunshine soon.Lindsaylew82 wrote:Hopefully it will dry out soon. It's early, yet!
Prolly wouldn't hurt to add a 1/4 cup of milk to the neem (assuming you mix it in a sprayer with a gallon of water.) oil. Also helps with fungus! Aerated compost tea helps as well.
I went out today and the plants look good. The black prince looks sad with so little foliage but it looks like it'll recover. I'll fertilize in a week or week and a half with water soluble fertilizer and hopefully that'll help. One of the unaffected branches actually has flowers on it. Here's hoping I can keep bugs and such from the fruits. Since tomorrow is payday I'll go get myself a good insecticidal soap and I'll use the neem oil to ward off any new fungus.imafan26 wrote:That is a lot of aphids. I haven't seen many aphids in any of my gardens for years except for one sickly kale. My garden patrol takes care of them.
If you want to try to save the plants all you can do is keep picking off the leaves and practicing good sanitation. The rain will make that very hard and you will have to retreat every 3 days or so. Neem is not a very good fungicide after the fact.
To clarify a point. Bacterial diseases don't always show up on the seedlings. The environmental conditions like humid wet conditions is what makes the disease express itself.
I rotate in time. I can wait a couple of years for disease pressure to drop. Other things can be planted instead, they just have to be resistant. The point in rotation is to deny the bacteria ior fungal spores a food source. Most pathogens are host dependent and different species grow on different plants so bacteria that attack cabbages are not the same ones that attack tomatoes. However, within the same family, the diseases may still be transmittable. Sanitation is usually the best way to do that. Mine are grown in pots so I can sanitize the pots and the soil. I can usually replant after a couple of months. But I don't plant in the exact same spot.
When it rains a lot and I have not done some premptive spraying, I usually start over since I have been down this road before and in my warm humid climate the faster I get rid of the diseased plants the sooner I can plant again.
However, if you want to keep trying and you think it may be something you can keep ahead of, then try it.
Yes ma'am it is! And I'm on the verge of freaking out, but then I see some things going on. There is some type of maggot or larvae they're yellowish, unless they're attached to a potato aphid, then they turn that pinkish/red color. It's about 1/4 of the size of the aphids, and it's making them into aphid raisins. I took that picture last week some time, and it looks very different now. There are still a lot of potato and peach aphids, but there are more mummies, and today I'm seeing a LOT of aphid raisins. I keep trying to take pictures , but they are sooooo teeny tiny!That is a lot of aphids. I haven't seen many aphids in any of my gardens for years except for one sickly kale. My garden patrol takes care of them.
Thank goodness it isn't too late for planting new starts because the rain we've had destroyed my jalapeño and sweet bell pepper plants. Here's hoping the rain stays away for a bit.Lindsaylew82 wrote:If you're interested PM me, and I can send you a link for mail order from the local greenhouse we use. The selection and quality are seriously amazing.
ETA:
It's not too late to put new plants in the ground right now!