My Tomatoes Plants don't Grow??? Rare Death?

[OROZCONLECHE]

My Tomatoe Plants don't Grow for The Most Part, My Other Plants like cucumber, pumpkin and squash grow like nothing, also some ramdom pumpkin plant was growing magnifisant and out of nowere just curled up the stem shrinked and died? what caused this??

[Bobberman]

Toamtoes are effected by tobacco so does anyone smoke or have tobacco on their hands. The vine crop may have been injured by a animal getting tripped up causing the roots to be damagged! Vine crops are oten damaged by night animals even deer!Tomatoes usually grow anywhere pretty well!

[OROZCONLECHE]

Actually my mom and dad are heavy smokers but don't smoke close by my plants and the plant was not hit or nothing as I seen it turn yellow little by little

[Bobberman]

Most people have never heard of Tobacco Mosaic disease. Here is some info from the University of Minn. This is very interesting and can be the cause of many plant problems over looked!
There are tomato plants resistant to this disease+++

https://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/DG1168.html

[OROZCONLECHE]

Wow That Might actually be It!! I Guess more Care and somewhere that the smoke wont get to is the right place.

[Bobberman]

Everywhere you look along the roads and shopping centers there are cigerett butts everywhere. Look at the street gutter and alog the highways some time and you will not believe it! Our shoes are constantly carrying the tobacco into our gardens. Wind blows them all over the fields! When I get leaves from the dump there are hundreds of half cigeretts in the mix!.Can this tobacco cause the Tobacco Mosaic to effect my tomatoes and other plants in my garden? Do cigeretts make good compost or do they cause problems in the compost?

[rainbowgardener]

Wow That Might actually be It!! I Guess more Care and somewhere that the smoke wont get to is the right place.

The virus cannot be transmitted in smoke. Only directly from tobacco or from touching the plants if you have touched tobacco. And touching tobacco does not include touching the paper it is wrapped in, you would have to directly contact the leaf.

I can't swear no cig butts have ever gotten into my compost pile with the fall leaves I collect and sometimes sweep up where people have piled them in the street. But I wouldn't knowingly compost cigarettes.

I'm not sure why your tomato plants aren't growing, but I'm doubting it is TMV which gives the leaves a very characteristic wrinkled/ ridged and mottled ("mosaic") or patchy appearance. I'd start with more basic questions like do they get enough sun, enough water, enough nutrients...

If you lived here, I would guess the problem with your pumpkin was squash vine borer. It is a moth that lays eggs at the base of plants in the squash family (including gourds and pumpkins). When the larvae hatch out, they bore their way into the stem and then eat it from the inside out. That destroys all the channels that send water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves. A huge squash plant can just shrivel up and die within a few days once this happens. Worst pest in my garden! If it is an SVB, you will find a characteristic hole near the base of the stem, with frass (droppings) outside it, that look like sawdust. But wikipedia says:

The squash vine borer lives in most temperate North American states, except the Pacific coast. Southern states have two broods a year of the borer.

so in Calif, you shouldn't have them. I don't know if they might be moving in or if you have some other pest that operates in a similar fashion. But anyway, check the stem for holes.

[carolyn137]

Tobacco Mosaic Virus used to be a major problem and it's discussed at almost all disease sites, but for the last 20 years or so all tobacco grown in the US is TMV resistant, which is not true of Turkish tobacco.

The last major outbreak of TMV was in MO maybe 15 years ago. It occasionally shows up, but not often

These days it's found almost exclusively in large commercial greenhouses where it's spread manually, not by the normal insect vector.

What is common is Cucumber Mosaic Virus, CMV, and the symptoms are almost the same as TMV and CMV has many host plants and that's not so good. I didn't look in the Disease Sticky here to see which disease sites are listed, but do take a look at CMV pictures to see the narrow twisted shoestring leaves.

It would also help if you could better describe the symptoms you see on your tomatoes so that we don't miss something here. Specifically, do you see any spots on the leaves, any wilting, etc. Because there could be other diseases, actually many of them, that turn plants yellow. Ones such as Fusarium and Root Knot Nematodes, which are also common in CA in many areas.

Finally, did you raise your plants from seed or did you buy them?

Carolyn

[elizaaabeth]

I'm just going to add another voice to thinking it is not tobacco related. I've heard a bit about this, and whenever I'm smoking and pruning my suckers off my tomatoes I feel kinda guilty (smoke break = ooh garden time) but haven't had any problems related to this (yet?) Note I smoke rollies, so I don't know if they counts as touching the leaves? Furthermore, my aunt was out a little bit ago and for a moment I got upset when she emptied the ashtrays into the mulch bucket (to eventually make it to the compost) but she said she always puts their (taylored) butts in the compost at home (Wales) and they've never had any problems. I'm still not keen on the idea as I can't help but think those butts will take forever to compost, but I've yet to get any empirical evidence