Tomato issues *again*

[TexasGardenGirl]

I swear I cannot win with my garden this year. I can't tell what's up. I dunno what in the heck is going on. If it's some sort of disease I think it hopped a ride on one of the starts that I bought. And if it is, I have no clue how to treat it, if treatment is possible. Man, tomatoes are a lot harder than I thought they'd be! I hate constantly seeming to have issues that I need advice on...but it is nice to be able to post here and not feel like people are going to ridicule me for being a newbie. So, what does this look like to y'all? My first thought was blight but every example shows there being a "bull's eye" look to the spots on the leaves. So, maybe not? I don't know....I need the help of a more experienced gardener, I think. And I'm thinking I may go to the county extension office to see if I could get some help. Anyway, thanks in advance for reading.

[applestar]

It could be blight I suppose, but don't the marks, overall, look like contact spray damage?

Have you sprayed anything? Especially something with oil in it?

If you haven't, is it possible your garden is getting hit by wind drift cloud of herbicide or insecticide? (I think this is the second time I said this to someone -- I don't want to sound or seem like I'm paranoid... )

[Lindsaylew82]

Hmmm. I disagree with blight. I think it looks like septoria. Leaf spot.

It's fungal. I use neem weekly, and I remove the affected branches. I clean my snips by dipping in a small cup of rubbing alcohol.

You're are gonna want to treat your plants like sick patients. If you touch a sick patient, you don't want to touch a well patient! Understand?

You are gonna want to remove all the affected branches. Neem oil is REALLY good stuff! If you decide to use it, you'll want to use it in the late afternoon, when the sun is not shinning directly on the plants, and it has overnight to dry.

Here, fungus happens. No matter what. It's always humid here, until the temps start to drop in the fall. We just try to keep it in check best we can. Removing infected stems does 2 things. Increases air flow, and removes the spores. Both help with fungal issues.

Mulch, mulch, mulch! Cover the bare dirt. If the dirt is covered, it can't splash up onto the leaves.

Water from the bottom. When you water from the top, the foliage gets wet. Fungus likes wet leaves! Hairy tomato plants like to hold water which further increases fungal happiness!

Some others here use different anti fungal treatments, but I really prefer neem oil. Having said that, I've been using aerated compost tea as a foliage treatment, and I think I'm seeing pretty good results as far as my regular fungal issues are involved. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with it!

[Lindsaylew82]

Well the top picture....that might be blight? Is that at the top of the plant?

[TexasGardenGirl]

Well the top picture....that might be blight? Is that at the top of the plant?

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?

ETA: Everything is mulched well now. But when I first put the plants in I didn't have a vehicle that could move the bags of mulch. I also water from below. Only time the foliage is wet is when it rains. Can't control that of course. And since it rained for a solid week I'm wondering if that's what caused it.

[Lindsaylew82]

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!

[TexasGardenGirl]

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!

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.

[imafan26]

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.

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... omato1.pdf
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... terial.htm
http://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.
http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homega ... e7af3.html
https://ag.umass.edu/services/hot-water-seed-treatment

[TexasGardenGirl]

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.

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... omato1.pdf
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... terial.htm
http://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.
http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homega ... e7af3.html
https://ag.umass.edu/services/hot-water-seed-treatment

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.

I did speak to a rep at the garden center and she said the supplier has actually just found out they have a bacterial issue in their greenhouses. Since it's been unchecked for this long, lots of plants got shipped that were affected without them knowing. The one I took three photos of was from that supplier. Hence why I think something hitched a ride to my garden.

This is the first year I've planted anything and I'm using raised beds. Next year I'd planned on moving my tomatoes where my green beans are and moving my green beans where my tomatoes are. Since they aren't in the same family, I'm assuming that should be okay.

I hadn't even thought of preventative fungicides when we got slammed with a week of rain and cool temperatures. But it was still humid. I'm gonna guess that did more harm than good.

Once the weather clears up to cloudy but not raining I'm going to go out and give everything a good pruning. And I won't stick any of the removed parts in my compost bin. I'm gonna treat them and hope new growth stays healthy. I guess that's all I can do.

[Lindsaylew82]

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!

[rainbowgardener]

Nothing to add to what's been said, except my sympathy! I know how frustrating it is. Tomatoes are supposedly the "gateway drug" to gardening - fresh tomatoes are so good, the plant (if things go well) is so productive. Everyone grows tomatoes. But in fact they are very difficult! They are the most disease prone thing I grow. Even the other nightshade family stuff, peppers and potatoes, never get all those fungal diseases.

I agree, I don't think septoria. I'm very familiar with septoria because my tomatoes almost always get it before the end of the season. The one year they didn't was the one year Cincinnati (where I lived until recently) had a huge drought, not only with almost no rain most of the summer, but with way less humidity than usual. In Oct, my tomato plants were still huge and leafy / bushy and beautiful! But that is the only time.

Unfortunately, septoria would be the good news. In my experience, anyway, septoria is less virulent and tomato plants can survive with it a lot longer. Both bacterial diseases and blights kill plants faster.

[applestar]

Wow, I'm thinking you folks have just pointed out the Silverlining in my area's annual summer drought.....

It sounds like you have had the situation identified, @TGG, with plenty of good advise. Good luck!

[TexasGardenGirl]

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!

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.

[TexasGardenGirl]

I went out to prune the affected foliage when there was a break in the rain. Figured since the sun wasn't gonna shine much, if at all, today then it'd be a good day since I knew I was going to take most of the foliage from the black prince. And I was right, most of it came off. I was left with mostly top growth but it all looked healthy, green, and spot free. I saw some bugs I've never seen before, though. Instead of starting a new thread I figure, since they were on the "patient zero" plant, I may as well post the photos here and see if anyone knows what they are and if they're good bugs or bad bugs. My gut says bad and makes me wonder if maybe the bugs are actually causing the issues. Anyway, photos.

Mostly, I'm curious about the top one, the green bug. I've never seen anything of the sort before. And the second one I'm not sure what type it is. It's very small. Hard to see and get a photo of it but it looks like some sort of teeny beetle. Can flea beetles be brown? I think I saw it hop around like one. And, on top of both of these bugs found on the plant, I saw an aphid. Where there is one, I'm assuming there's more. So now I get to try to combat two issues at once. Unless the first issue is caused by the bugs.

[applestar]

I think the first one is a katydid juvenile, though we're only seeing the front end. Did it have "grass hopper" back legs?