Brown Spots on Roma Tomato Leaves - Septoria?

[wisconsindead]

Can anyone diagnose what this is? I think it may be septoria. I'm still really new to gardening so I can't tell for sure. Its only on one of the six tomato plants I have. Three of them are roma. I have mulch around the base of all of my plants to encourage bugs and roots at the soil surface and also to help prevent soil splashing. I do water overhead. I just have too many plants to water spot by spot. But maybe thats what it takes. I also don't water very frequently. Usually I'll water the entire garden once a week and it has barely rained the past two weeks so I feel like I'm doing the right things.

Any advice on what it is and how to control it would be greatly appreciated!!

[CharlieBear]

Is the problem on the whole plant or just the lowest branch or two. If only on the lowest branch or two, remove them. Over head watering tomatoes invites early blight, late blight and on and on. Also tomatoes need to be watered evenly. They do not like to be wet-dry-wet-dry. You don't say where you are, how hot it is, how much you water or how you determine when to water. The other problem is different plants in the vegetable garden really want different amounts of water to do well. Mulching helps of course, but water needs depend or soil type, daytime heat, nighttime lowers, how they are planted, how close together and so forth. Also, if it is just a few leaves here and there remove them. Many tomato problems are hard to correct once they start, so if you can limit it to a few leaves or lower branches I would start with the easiest fix and if possible, checking the dampness of you ground more often and next year put the tomatoes where you can hand water them, even if you plan to over head water the rest. The problem for me is not knowing your climate the picture looks like several different things, hopefully someone else will be sure from looking.

[wisconsindead]

Thanks Charlie.

So I am in Southeastern Wisconsin (Zone 5?). Weather has been relatively dry lately, humid but not much rain. All of my plants struggled within the first two weeks but have, for the most part, all come back and grown a good bit looking healthy.

My soil is compost/manure/top soil (roughly 2-6 inches deep) on top of clay. It retains moisture really well in my opinion. I haven't really had much of a gauge on how often to water the plants. None of them have shown wilt from dehydration. I know what that looks like (but they also aren't showing any signs of over watering, well at least from what I can tell). From what you're saying about watering I get the impression that I should water more frequently to try and keep and even moisture...? I've always just tried to water very thoroughly and then give the plants time to use that moisture. So more of a wet dry wet dry type thing.

The spotting is migrating upwards on the plant. Some of the newest leaves have it so I'm not sure removing the bottom few would help. Idk though.

[imafan26]

Septoria usually has a yellow halo around the spots. It might also be Bacterial spot or Bacterial speck which are usually smaller than septoria spots and may or may not have yellow halos.
https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/ ... oblems.pdf

[wisconsindead]

Just to update. I ended up removing the few bottom sets of leaves that looked the worst and left a few that still had spots on them. I was gone all weekend and thought about doing a treatment using some sort of spray but didn't get around to it. I was worried it would worsen while I was gone but I found that it hadn't spread and is probably under control now. A friend said it was a disease called black spot. Not sure if he's right. But hopefully the plant will continue to fend off the pests.