tomato in distress

hi i was hoping someone might be able to help me identify the problem with my tomatoes. they arn't wilting because of lack of moisture. here are a few pictures. i have only 3 tomatoe plants and they are all doing this.
thanks debi z

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and last but not least #3

I had one looking like this and pulled it out and found I had root knot nematodes. Nasty little noseeums! But mine was too far gone so that is why I pulled it. Not sure if that is what you have, but my tom looked exactly like yours. Jul

something else i noticed while i was in the veg garden today looking at my turnips, they are infested with cutworms, i through down some ortho stuff i had just bought recently for other part of a garden with problems. perhaps these are the culprits?

This message was edited Friday, Jul 25th 9:11 PM

Cutworms can do some major damage. If you use something on your veggies, make sure it is safe. You can put light weight cardboard colars on your plants, and that will stop them. Make sure you put the colar down about 2 inches. Pick off all the worms you can if you see any. They eat away at the bottom of the plant just above and below the soil. Are you sure it is cutworms on your turnips??? I am not familiar with what kind of worms eat turnips cuz, I don't grow/like them. But, It could be another type of worm. I am not sure you can put a colar on turnips however. Good luck.

It looks like it could be one of the nasty wilts, too (verticulum or fusarium). If you cut off one of the stems, check to see if there are brown streaks running through the green pith. If so, pull it up and throw it in the garbage or burn it (not compost). It spreads to other plants, and to other crops (including potatoes and peppers).

Sadly, when I was first growing veggies I didn't know this, and in a couple weeks, lost all my 'mater and pepper plants in the garden :(

well the diseased tomatoes, whatever it was, are in the trash. one completely died away and the others, even though the tomatoes were ripening, however small, didn't taste right :( so out they came. don't think it was the one you mentioned lupine, my pepper plants are doing fine. i checked the roots and they were fine. i'm thinking now that it might have been the same thing the lupines i planted had. check this out. not that great of a pick, but the leaves started to die away on one and then after a bit moved on to the 2nd plant and then finally the 3rd. not much left. debi z

Gee, that is sad. I have no clue. Are there any signs of grubs in your soil or bugs? If not, this has me stumped.

Maybe Molybee will know. You might want to ask her. Good luck!

well i have found a lot of these in my soil this year, far more than any other year. i don't know what they are. they are about 1 1/2" long and less than an 1/8th inch wide, with lots of legs. i couldn't get a shot that wasn't blurred, they scurry along, so i put it on a leaf curled up, which they do like a grub in defence. i'm sure there is a grub or 2 in my soil, but not a whole lot. i treat for that.

Looks like a centapede sort of thing. I am not familiar with what they do to plants. Sorry I can't help out more. Go to the pest forum and ask. Good luck.

Looks like a worm that I have in my garden, too. No idea what they are, but when I have a lot, my plants suffer. Maybe they are eating the roots? I chop 'em when I see 'em. I call them (private name only) the black curly worms.

Hope this information helps, Debi. This link is from Ohio State University and it discusses Fusarium and Verticillium Wilts of Tomato, Potato, Pepper, and Eggplant. http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/3000/3122.html

shirley, thank you for the website. it was very interesting and easy for me to understand.
my peppers are not effected at all. they are healthy as can be, are located in front ofand to the side of where the tomatoes were. with all the rain, humidity and wind here i can't understand how they wouldn't be effected if it was this disease. of course i have a lot to learn, so i can't rule it out entirely. :) won't be the first or last time i've been wrong. :)
it suggests planting a rotation crop of cereals or grasses. i'd be best with a grass i would imagine. what type of grasses do they refer too?
thanks.

Grasses would mean things like corn, wheat, oat-grass. For home veggie gardens, it usually is a way to provide for a year of fallow growth, without allowing it to run to weeds which would then create a nightmare! There are a lot of grass cover-crops that are introduced into crop rotations. Most are annuals, either summer or winter.

That insect is a millipede, which is quite different from a centepede. Just google it or something. I don't think they hurt anything.

This is just a thought, but did you do any lawn treatments (weed and feed) that might have affected the plants? It's odd that the maters and two different types of perennials got sick and died. It sounded to me too like verticulum as lupine mentioned. When you pulled out the dead plants, were you able to do as lupine suggested below in quotes (I cut and pasted her text):

"If you cut off one of the stems, check to see if there are brown streaks running through the green pith. If so, pull it up and throw it in the garbage or burn it (not compost). It spreads to other plants, and to other crops (including potatoes and peppers)."

If you post this over to the Tomato Forum, I'm sure Dr. Carolyn (and the other pros) can help you out. You might even drop a note to admin. and ask them to copy it over there for you.

Those guys at the Tomoto Forum know their stuff!