My spotty and variegated tomatoes (pics)

16 years ago

Hi everyone,

I've got 2 plants of 2 different varieties, wich after a week long of rain, started to show 2 "symptoms"... I've been searching in the Tomatoes forum, the Problem Solver and other websites, not being able to identify what ails my tomatoes, also posted this on the tomatoes forum, without any help.

The tomatoes are under a summer raw cover fabric, but it becomes wet and allows some humidity to go through.

Case One: one of the plants started to show brown spots on on leaves of side of the plant, mostly on bottom leaves. I left the main stem in the ground with two "apparently healthy" side shots on it, cut sharply and applied wound sealer and disposed of the rest of the plant, including forming fruitsÂ Here is a small piece, pictured:

Underside:

Top of the same leaf:

------

Case Two: The other variety, started also to show very once in a while some very light brown spots, but what worries me is that they're getting more and more yellow, especially around the nerves of the leaves. They are actually starting to look like variegated tomato plants (this picture came dark):

I'll highly appreciate your opinions. Thank you so much in advance!

Carol

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Comments (4)

justaguy2
16 years ago
Honestly the leaves look healthy to me.

Various colorations on the leaves usually point to damage/stress from something, but a lot of the time it clears on it's own.

Sometimes it doesn't but when it doesn't it generally does no good to remove leaves that are mostly healthy. Removing leaves heavily damaged (30% or more surface area) might be OK, but otherwise just leave the plant alone and see what happens.

Yes, there are lots of diseases that can trash tomato plants, but there are so many temporary and mostly harmless sources of leaf spots and colorations that it just isn't worth worrying about unless the damage becomes extensive.

When the damage does become extensive there usually isn't any cure anyway for the current season.

I guess what I am saying is relax, take a step back and just leave the plants be and see what happens. Only in magazines do plants with perfect leaves exist and even then it's only after removing the imperfect leaves. It's like the supermodels with perfect skin only exist thanks to air brushing and other photo manipulation.
gonefishin
16 years ago
If I were going to guess, I might suspect some Bacterial Speck, or spot. I believe you said that you had some Daconil at ready, I believe that I would try applying that and see if it halts the spread of the problem. Remove the infected leaves.

I think that with the passage of time, some of the older, lower leaves just mature and die.
Bill P.
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For your tomato, it looks like Flea Beetles, you can actually see one in the bottom-most picture you posted and the damage is typical of them. Treatment for Flea Beetles depends on your personal preference. For the non-organic route, I believe you can use Sevin insecticide - provided they are listed on the bottle, which I believe they are. Organic pesticides, on the other hand, I don't know of any for killing Flea Beetles - I'll defer to those with experience on the matter. I don't use any pesticides really, but if I had them, I'd just squish as many as I could find :) For your Basil, it kind of looks like it's got sunburn / windburn. Was it hardened off before putting it in full sun? For the cucumber... I'm guessing it's probably not warm enough yet for it to really take-off growing. It looks fine and pretty much like most of my seedlings. They always start-off slow and then try to conquer the garden in a matter of weeks. Good luck.
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Not fungus - the spots are too dry. I'm going with sun damage, could be fertilizer issue (I don't know since I don't fertilize). Though 5-5-5 shouldn't be a problem. Which Fafard did you use? Some contain a slight amount of nutrients (I use #2), that could possibly be an issue but they should grow out of it (those leaves won't recover) as you water. BTW, your mix looks like it has some bark in it? #2 just has peat moss and perlite.
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carol_71
Original Author
16 years ago
Thank you justaguy, your advice is valid, but I'd really like to enjoy my plants till the first frost.

Gonefishin, I just mentioned the antifungal in the other forum. It's I think like Daconil, from Bayer, with chlorothalonil as active ingredient and was just saying to my husband that I'm thinking of just spraying with that. Will give it a try, and let you know how they do.

Thanks a lot to both!!
Carol
justaguy2
16 years ago
Thank you justaguy, your advice is valid, but I'd really like to enjoy my plants till the first frost.

Me too! ;-)

With the exception of last year I always have enjoyed tomatos until frost and I have no plants that don't have leaf damage much worse than yours by mid season.

There is no plant I am more passionate about growing than tomatos, but that doesn't make me an expert. I am just saying that tomatos are prone to 20,000 ailments and most of them are passing and result in some stress evident in the leaves or fruit and it's usually temporary unless there is a disease present in which case they usually aren't curable, just some that can be slowed down a bit.

Anyway, if you have daconil, go ahead and give it a try.

At the same time, please do try to not stress over odd looking leaves. I have them every year without exception and the plants always bear until frost (except last year). Tomatos simply do this for many people.

My spotty and variegated tomatoes (pics)

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justaguy2

gonefishin

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My spotty and variegated tomatoes (pics)

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justaguy2

gonefishin

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