For the 3rd year in a row my tomatoes have developed a funk with the following life cycle:
1. Leaves turn yellow, and have dark brown speckling
2. Then the leaves wilt and the wilting goes along the branch from the outside of the plant toward the main trunk.
3. Theprocess starts at the bottom of the plant and works up.
4. The fruit is unaffected and continues to ripen until the plan eventually just shrivels up.
Attached is a picture of the leaf in the early part of the process.
Here's a picture of the branch, shriveled up.
I am having the same problem, but this is the first time this has happened to my crop. This is my fourth year growing lots of tomatoes and every year, I have learned more and more, partly due to the great people on this site. This year was supposed to be perfect. I have been working on my soil, and was so careful to do everything that would give me a great harvest. But, my leaves look just like yours and my plants are puny. However, I have lots of tomatoes that are getting ripe and taste great. The tops of the plants are still green and growing, with blossoms, but I think that the plants are stunted and I fear that the plants will give up and completely wilt. I sprayed them with "Safer 3 it 1" which has the OMRI seal and it might have slowed it down.
Any advice out there for us?
Celery, look at the centers of the spots in the first photo and you'll see target or ring structures and that means Early Blight ( A. solani). the fungal spores are spread by wind and rain but if it starts on the bottom leaves it indicates that you probably grew plants there last year that had the same disease and spores were shed to the soil so what you have is called splashback infection.
If it were a new infection from wind or rain the leaves all over the planmt would be affected.
But wilting is not a feature of any of the four common foliage diseases so I don't know what that's all about b'c most of the diseases such as Fusarium and friends are not that common in IL.
Early Blight can cause symptoms on the stems as well as the fruits, but not all the time.
Carolyn
After doing lots of research, I decided that my plants have Septoria Leaf Spot. I don't see any disease on the stems or on the fruit, and the upper part of the plant keeps growing. If it is Septoria or Early Blight and the fruit looks okay, is it safe to eat the fruit?
I agree it looks just like Septoria Leaf Spot. Yes, the fruit should be safe to eat, just follow the recommendations of the fungicide you used to see how long you need to wait from application till harvest. The fungicide can stop the disease from spreading further but will not repair the damage that has already been done. I would remove the affected leaves bag them up and throw them in the trash. Don't compost them. The plants may look naked but there's a good chance they will put out new, healthy leaves if you can get the disease under control.
Lisa
Slope, yes, it's OK to eat the fruits.
I can't see an up close picture of the affected leaves on your plants but I can see the ones celery showed and those bullet like lesions with the rings in them are Early Blight.
With either Early Blight or Septoria Leaf Spot the management and treatment is the same and with both there don't have to be lesions on the stems or on the fruits, but there can be.
Removing all affected foliage and starting a spray program with an effective anti-fungal is best as mentioned above.
What concerns me a bit is the fact that you live in CA and there are other conditions to consider when you say you have puny stunted plants which suggests to me that there's been inhibition of actual growth, but if you're sure it's just fungal foliage diseases, which don''t usually inhibit growth, and especially when you say the top foliage is green and fine, to date, then OK.
Carolyn
I'm afraid the season is against you now when it comes to fungal diseases. I had a battle with early blight in the first part of June, and I was able to stop it and save all my plants by removing the affected branches and spraying regularly with daconil.
That was early in the season though, and the plants were 18"-24" tall with few branches and leaves. Also, they were young, vigorous, and growing and they were able to overcome the disease.
That's a far different situation from trying to stop fungus disease on mature plants with lots of leaves and branches that make it difficult to spray or remove all the diseased foliage. This late in the season tomato plants naturally start to go downhill in vigor and quality, and I think it's going to be a lot harder to stop a fungus disease now.
Mine are doing the same &^$%*^%* thing, but I'm pretty much giving in to it. At this point it would cost more for the fungicides and my time than would be worth the battle for what's left of the season. I'm trying to keep them going as best I can by plucking the bad stuff off, but with the rains we are having, the wilting and spotting is endless. I do have gazillions of very large fruits out there, so I'm just hoping they will have time to ripen before the plants bite the dust. I haven't even sampled half of the varieties out there yet, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
My fingers And toes are crossed! I planted 70 different varieties and planned to do my own taste tests. Now I'm just hoping to get enough to satisfy my craving for BLTs. Like you, Sequee, I keep pruning off the affected leaves and making sure that the bottom leaves don't get damp. So far, the tops keep growing. Oh well. Next year.
Has it been wet in Runnig Springs?
"Has it been wet in Running Springs?"
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Ha - no it wouldn't be. Running Springs is near where we used to live in CA, only we were in the valley at 1200 ft. elevation and Running Springs is in the San Bernardino Mountains at near 6000 ft. elevation. One thing the two places have in common is very low humidity and NO RAIN from May to October - and lots of years hardly any then.
Running Springs is in mountain pine-forest country and a real pretty place - but I think it'd be hard to grow tomatoes there.
Hey, Ozark. I know where Running Springs is I'm from Cali too. : ) Isn't it on the way to Big Bear? I've just noticed fungal diseases ramp up when the plants get wet (sprinklers). I know the High Desert had monsoonal rains and flash floods early in the summer, was wondering if the mountains had, had some weird weather also.
Ozark and 1lisac, I am so surprised that you know about our little community. Yes, we are located between Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. And yes, it is usually very dry here. This spring has been pretty mild and we have had some monsoonal rains and humidity and it might have contributed to my problem. We are definitely in a pine forest at a high elevation and so we are a small micro climate for southern California. We can get into the nineties in the summer and starting in October, we can get snow at any time. It makes growing veggies a challenge, but I've been pretty successful. Gardening here depends on finding a patch of sunny space between the trees that is level enough to work on. But its fun!
"Ozark and 1lisac, I am so surprised that you know about our little community."
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Yup, being retired from your county's Sheriff's department will do that. I've still got a lot of brain cells wasted remembering street names and addresses of "problem" houses in S.B.Co. - but I don't remember a one in Running Springs.
That's a good thing. lol
A couple of my tomato plants and my summer squash have developed fungus similar to what's been discussed here. I am chopping them down this weekend.
Is it OK to re-use the potting soil from plants that have Early Blight or Septoria Leaf Spot? I usually throw out the tomato soil because it's a solid mass of roots by summer's end. But the summer squash has some soil I could re-use.
I would throw the soil out. That's one of the reasons they recommend crop rotation, because infected plant debris can be found in the soil.
I raise a second crop of tomatoes. This year like 2007 [a dry spell] finds the plants very healthy for the most part. The cherries are unbelievably productive.
The reason for a second crop is that many of the first crop plants usually drop off in vitality about now and the fruits are just not as large and wonderful as earlier.
