Sick Tomatoes!!

[catherine]

We left for vacation on August 13. I left instructions with BIL to water our veggie garden daily, and I showed him how and where to turn on the sprinkler. I told him not to water on days we have rain (I know it sounds simplistic, but this is a guy who saw his first cucumber on a vine this year).

He came and joined us for the last 3 days and enlisted the girl next door to take over the job.

We came home and saw the tomato plants were not well. The main stems are green, but many of the branches are yellow and snap off easily. the leaves are also yellow and pitted with brown spots. Many leaves are just dead. The tomatoes themselves, which were going great guns when we left, have stopped growing at all. They're exactly where they were two weeks ago or worse.

What do you suppose happened?? Is it some kind of blight, or our inexperienced gardener who may have over or under watered??

[CathyA]

All of the above! Its hard to know. Are the yellow leaves with spots at the bottom of the plant? It could be late blight, or it could be a blight that's caused from soil from the ground splashing up onto the leaves.
Just give them alot of TLC and they'll probably be okay.
As far as the soil fungus goes, I get around that by putting straw under all the tomato plants. It really helps alot.
Good luck catherine.........and I hope you still get some tomatoes.

[Gregg]

There are several things with similar symptoms, but it sounds like tobacco mosaic virus. That can take over healthy tomatoes pretty quickly and is very contagious. It can, I believe, also transfer to vine crops like cukes and melons. It's bad around here this year because of the drought and f that is what you have the plants won't recover. The best thing you can do is to take out the infected plants before they get the rest of the garden sick. Be really careful not to touch the sick plants and then touch anything that is healthy. If you have TMV it can spread really quickly that way.

[catherine]

Thanks, Cathy and Gregg!

Well, I just came back in from untangling the mess, trimming dead stuff, tying up the vines that had drooped/fallen on the ground, etc. If I can get the tomatoes to ripen I'll be happy.

Gregg, I did look up the mosaic virus, and the description does fit, although I'm not positive that's what it is. I still think the plants could also have a fungus caused by overwatering... but I did remove stuff that looked pretty infested.

We'll see what happens!

[CathyA]

The bottoms of mine are starting to look bad.........but I think its just old age.
Hopefully yours will perk up soon!

[CatsNK]

I'm very surprised no one else here grows tomatoes enough to recognize early/late blight. You either have late or early blight. If it's late blight, by the time you see this your plants will be totally dead. If it's early blight you may be able to stay ahead of it.

Watering makes no difference, in fact lots of water will make blight far, far worse. Google early and late tomato blight - my guess is you'll have your answer.

[catherine]

Yes, I kind of thought it might be a blight of some sort, but DH is stuck on the underwatering theory. If that were true, ALL of our plants would be withered, and that's not the case. All the herbs, the kale, the peppers, and the cucumbers are just fine. Plus, if that were the case, at this point, 10 days after our return, the tomatoes would have started to come back, and really, they're just stuck in time.

According to my Google search, yeah, it could be blight. But I still hate to pull them up.

Thanks!

[Gregg]

Are the bottoms of the tomatoes themselves turning black as they ripen? I remember that being a symptom of TMV, but don't remember if blight has that effect or not. Regardless of what it is, its September now so you might as well ride it out and see what you get for a late crop. Just don't add the plants to your compost pile. Whatever it is you don't want to spread it around.

[catherine]

Are the bottoms of the tomatoes themselves turning black as they ripen? I remember that being a symptom of TMV, but don't remember if blight has that effect or not. Regardless of what it is, its September now so you might as well ride it out and see what you get for a late crop. Just don't add the plants to your compost pile. Whatever it is you don't want to spread it around.

Actually, the fruit itself looks OK, but, again, just frozen in time. In fact, I asked my DH if he knows how to make fried green tomatoes, because that's what we seem to have a bunch of right now. No ripening, no growing, no dying.

[CatsNK]

Actually, the fruit itself looks OK, but, again, just frozen in time. In fact, I asked my DH if he knows how to make fried green tomatoes, because that's what we seem to have a bunch of right now. No ripening, no growing, no dying.

http://organicgardening.about.com/b/2009/07/05/diagnosing-tomato-diseases-is-it-early-blight-late-blight-or-septoria.htm

http://umaine.edu/ipm/ipddl/publications/5087e/

I'm surprised this is the first time you've had blight - it's extremely common and becoming more so, especially in the northeast.

Late blight is devastating - we had it in 2009 and it took me weeks to recover from pulling out all my dead tomatoes and putting them out for trash pick-up. I was nearly crying, and hoped never to do it again. Now we have the early blight, still terrible, but not as much so.

[Gregg]

This is how I do fried green tomatoes (http://busterbucks.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Make-Fried-Green-Tomatoes). If you've never put them on a BLT with the red tomatoes you haven't lived!