HelpfulGardener.com

I have the same thing showing up on tomatoes / potato / beets / cucumber / eggplants / peppers / beans ........

Its like a circular spot brown surrounded by a dark border and it basically eats the leaves.....

I believe that I've diagnosed it as anthracnose / angular leaf spot / bacterial speck / bacterial canker or septoria leaf spot ........ anyway I think I've read correctly that copper sulphate is a treatment for all those problems ?

I think the closest are either bacterial spec or septoria leaf spot to my problem, I think it got everywhere from my water hose or watering........

Anyway what if any way is the best way to tackle this problem? I'm almost 99% certain it is a bacteria of come kind or fungi .........

Yoki can you just explain how and when you water?
Having read back through your other posts I know you have had a lot of problems with the weather being too wet but even so you should not have so many problems with your plants.

I was spraying (misting) a couple times during the day because it was so hot but so wet I was just trying to cool them off........ I read a couple places that top watering is bad so I've stopped doing that.....

My parents are having similiar issues and they live 10 miles away and don't water the tops of the plants....... also another neighbor (farmers so neighbor is anything within 20 miles) about 5 miles away is having issues

Last year everything grew perfectly, this year I added some peat moss but I don't think my parents or neighbors did so I ruled that out for the most part..... but we've all had excessive water like no one can remember the ground is still wet an inch down and it hasn't rained in 2 weeks.

My next step is to get a soil test, my ph tester says the soil is within .5 of 7 ph everywhere I tested........ The plants all took off like crazy then these black spots appeared on leaves...... they turned into grey / brown (dried out leaf) surrounded by dark edge (dark edge I'm assuming is the bacteria or fungi) These are little spots like half the size of a pencil eraser but they expand like crazy and can double the amount of spots in a day

Its on everything in the garden so I have to assume its fungi or bacteria ?

Anyone have another diagnosis that would cause the same thing to happen on so many different things? What can I do about it? Should I be removing the affected plants ? (basically the whole garden at this point)

only thing I've seen as a treatment are fungicides and most commonly copper sulphate ......... I don't know if they are safe to use or what but if I don't do something in the next few days at the rate this stuff is growing not much will be left......

yoki wrote:I was spraying (misting) a couple times during the day because it was so hot but so wet I was just trying to cool them off........ I read a couple places that top watering is bad so I've stopped doing that.....

That what I wanted to check on before talking about disease. It is always worth ruling out the simplest things first!

It does sound like fungal problems, especially with the conditions you describe. If your plants are sat in water this will start to affect the PH. Too much water causes leaching which increases PH. Not a lot you can do until the water recedes.

Could it be tomato blight? That is caused by wet, humid conditions and spread by rain splash, can affect potatoes, etc...

https://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w163/dadbear/P1010467.jpg
https://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profiles0803/tomato_blight.asp


It depends how bad the blight is as to how you treat it. If it's just brown, chocolate covered splotches on the leaves you can try spraying with Bordeaux mixture (copper sulphate). You'll need to do this on a dry day. However if you have any part of the stem which is black then pull it up immediately. You can put in on your compost, but your pile needs to reach very high temperatures or else the spores will just linger. I would err on the safe side and dispose of it.

Good luck. I hope you manage to salvage something!

hmm well I don't think its tomato blight but can't rule it out.....

The reason I don't think its blight the spots dry up and fall out of the leaf as it spreads leaving holes in the leaves...... That's why I'm leaning towards fungi or bacteria

I've pulled a couple of the tomato plants and didn't notice anything wrong with the roots or stems...... I don't really know what they are supposed to look like

The stems appear green and fine and the roots looked fine they were white and seemed to have grown quite well...... the soil however is still quite wet and I haven't watered anything for I think 2 weeks now...

I am new to the greenhouse thing though, just finished building it late this spring, we added a shade cover over it because we were having problems keeping the temperature from getting to hot...... we have been just leaving the shade on would that hurt anything?

I sprayed some fungicide the other day and I'm hoping that it slowed the problem down as I haven't seen any huge spreading of the problem since I'm keeping my fingers crossed.....

Now how would you deal with the old leaves that look affected? Some of the tomatoes seem to be having new growth that looks healthy, would you remove the sick looking stuff or will pruning hurt the recovery ?

Whatever it is I would take off the worst affected leaves. The plants can cope quite well without once the fruit has appeared. I have virtually stripped a plant of all its leaves and the toms have carried on growing and ripening. That was last year for me. We had the wettest summer on record. I had the least tomatoes on record! We had one, possibly two weeks of sunshine all through June, July and August! Most of the flowers fell off. I think it was even too wet for the pollinators to come out. The leaves went limp, yellow and mushy. Still the fruit that did set continued to grow and ripen. Some so late I took them off and ripened them indoors.

As for the greenhouse leaving the shade on will be fine if it is too hot. The plants will appreciate the cover.

Just noticed in my last post I posted that leaching would increase PH. That should say decrease!

I don't think your garden is suffering from a single disease, but rather a complex of diseases caused by the excessively moist weather. As you found in your research, many plentiful and diverse leaf-dwelling fungi party down under damp conditions. Meanwhile, below ground microorganisms that grow in high moisture are destroying small roots, making it more difficult for the plants to respond. At this point, the most potent fungicide in the world is not likely to do any good. What you need is dry weather!

Meantime, you can thin. For ex, I nip out cucumber leaves as soon as I see the water-soaked patches that indicate early stage downy mildew. On tomatoes, I prune out low leaves before early blight can get going (it does anyway, but later and not as bad). See before and after here:
https://www.motherearthnews.com/Grow-It/Organic-Gardening/Preventive-Pruning-for-Tomato-Early-Blight-Control.aspx?blogid=1502


I'm sure that if I wanted, I could find evidence of a dozen common diseases in my garden at this moment. But as long as the weather cooperates, the plants prevail and produce well anyway.

Try not to freak. Thin, trim, and wait. Replant what's not worth saving.

If anyone is seeing distorted growth in tomato family crops, but not in cucurbits, you might want to track this herbicide residue story https://www.compostgardening.com/.

Hope things in your garden start turning around today!

Barbara Pleasant