Bubbadillo,

Hi from Shady Dale! We're so close geographically that we could almost throw rocks at one another...but why would we want to do that? I haven't seen you post in a while and wondered if you were still out west.

Can you tell me more about your beans and tomatoes? Was there a variety name on the beans? What varieties of tomatoes did you plant?

Is that brownish-white discoloration inside the leaf tissue or is in on the surface like a growth? Also, how long have the beans and tomatoes been in the ground, and did you cover them up on Mon. and Tues. night when cold overnight lows threatened?

If it is a disease, it really bothers me to think that Bonnie Plants are spreading it because they just went through the horrid late blight crisis of the NE and Eastern USA a couple of years ago, for which BP was blamed, fairly or not, for spreading it.

I need to know:

--how long they've been in the ground

--if they're in sandy soil, clay or what

--if you know how low the temps dropped out there at Falconhead on Mon. and Tues. or do you know if your temps there usually are about the same as those at the Mesonet station in Burneyville?

--are you near the gol fcourse where lawn maintenance chemicals could drift onto your plants?

--Were the plants at Lowe's and Home Depot that look like yours out on the sidewalk rack or were they inside the garden centers?

I think it could be a disease, but it also could be some sort of environmental stress or damage.

I don't think I've ever seen the same disease hit my beans and tomatoes at the exact same time. Mosaic viruses could do that though.

While you're answering my questions, I'm going to run upstairs and get my tomato disease book.

Jay, if you're reading this, we really need your help. You're better at diagnosing disease problems than I am.

Dawn

The tomatoes are in large planters with potting soil from Lowes. They have been planted about 5 weeks. The temps Mon were about 38 degrees. The beans are in the ground and it is sandy. The tissue between the veins of the leaves looks eroded and is somewhat transparent. Lower leaves are curling and dying. It has spread over the entire plant in about 4 days.
The tomato varieties are Husky Red Cherry and Bonnie Select determinate. I planted these in planters because the arent nematode resistant and I have nematodes in the garden (planted Elbon Rye in the garden last fall and dug it in prior to planting)
We are on the south end of Falconhead about 1/2 mile from the golf course with lots of trees between us and the course. Prevailing winds from the south should carry all spray away from us but I do suspect 2 4D damages sometimes later in the season . The plants at Wal Mart were inside the shade area and the Lowes plants were in the parking lot.
It doesn't look like mosaic virus to me. It looks like the chlorophyll layer of the leaf is abraded.

Bubba, This picture looks as close as I could find to the picture you posted.

Here is a link that might be useful: Malathion Damage

Bubbadillo,

I confess to being somewhat baffled by this. It looks "kind of, sort of" like several things, but not really like any of them.

Because both the Burneyville Mesonet station and our house went down to 31 degrees in the early hours of the morning of May 3rd, I was leaning towards some sort of patchy freeze or frost damage. However, I've never seen such widespread patchy damage like this attributed to marginally cold weather like you had at 38 degrees. I have seen similar damage when plants were covered with plastic to keep the frost off. Any place the plant actually touched the plastic during the time that frost occurred, you saw damage similar to what is on your plants. However, on the plants I saw it on, each plant had a mere handful of spots. Your spotting is incredibly widespread.

If you had just purchased the tomato plants and just transplanted them into their containers, I'd think they weren't properly hardened off and had sunscald. However, if you've had them for five weeks, then surely you've had them in the sun for most of that time.

It bothers me that the plants at two separate stores and at your house show the same symptoms and that points to some sort of environmental stress. It is unlikely the plants in the stores now are the same ones that were there 5 weeks ago when you purchased your plants. Thus, a disease seems unlikely to have suddenly popped up in your plants that you've had 5 weeks and also in newer shipments of plants at that exact same time. If BP had been shipping diseased bean plants and tomato plants for 5 weeks, we all would have heard about it by now.

It also looks a little like several nutritional deficiencies, but not enough like one specific deficiency that I think that is the answer.

Tomato foliage issues are notoriously hard to diagnose from photos because we lack context. For example, if I see a slight problem developing today, I'm checking the plant day to day and I know how and when it started, what the conditions were like, how it looked the next day, and then the next and the next. All that time, I'm noting how it is or isn't progressing and also whether any thing I am doing is helping it or not. Looking at one photo taken on one day doesn't give us that context. Having said all of that, yours doesn't look like an disease damage I've ever seen.

However, my experience with tomato diseases is limited to just a handful of issues like early blight, late blight, septoria leaf spot, bacterial speck, bacterial spot, tomato spotted wilt, bacterial wilt, cloudy spot, tomato yellow leaf curl, curly top, southern blight, BER (actually a physiological issue, not a disease), fusarium wilt and pith necrosis. That sounds like a lot, but I've grown tomatoes a lot of years and have only seen each of those a couple of times in my own garden. For example, I've only seen southern blight once and tomato spotted wilt once. There are many, many more diseases out there that I've never seen first-hand.

Are there any other vegetable plants nearby that this is not appearing on? If so, what are they? That might give us a clue.

And, FYI, frost can form at 38 or 39 degrees under some conditions.

Carol,

Maybe it his malation damage, but it seems odd it would show up at his plants he's had for 5 weeks the very same time it showed up on plants in Ardmore. I suppose stranger things have happened?

Bubbadillo,

I just had another thought. Have your plants had minor hail damage in the last week? We had very small hail here at our house and also down in Thackerville on Sunday afternoon. At our house this hail was not large enough to hurt the leaves, but after the previous hail a couple of weeks ago, (that hail which quite a bit larger), I had a lot of damage and everywhere the onion leaves were hit by hail, there are little bad spots kind of like what you have on your plants.

Dawn

Baffles me too. I have gardened for about 50 years and this is a new one for me.The plants were about 2 ft tall, lush and green a few days ago and now seem to be on the way out. They are under the eaves of the house on the east side so they weren't exposed to hail or overly watered by the rains. Freeze damage I have seen on plants usually doesn't involve the whole plant unless it's really cold. I don't use pesticides and only occasionally use Daconil fungicide later in the season. The beans were raised from seed in the garden and are Kentucky Blues they are susceptible to rust later when the spider mites arrive but not now. For now I'm isolating the tomatoes from the garden (If they continue the decline they will be dead in a couple of days) and am removing the beans and putting them in the trash. I have 30 other tomatoes in the garden and see no signs of this problem on them. I don't remember if I bought the tomatoes at Wal Mart or Home Depot. I was just surprised to see the same symptoms on the plants at Wal Mart and Lowes today.

I just wondered if Falconhead had sprayed for mosquitoes and didn't mix right or something.

There are lots of varibles here:
Bought 5 weeks ago
Bought 2 different places
Looking like the plants still at the vendor
Two kinds of plants, not related
One in container and one in the ground

Spraying just seemed like the most likely cause but who knows. I had a cousin that had an exterminator spraying the outside of her house. Her husband came home and found her on the floor with her limbs folded like a dying bug. She got medical care and lived but she was lucky he came home when he did.

The damage just looks like it is from the outside in rather than the inside out like disease. That may not make sense to anyway but me. LOL Don't laugh, I'm old, and have been on my knees weeding and planting peppers all day. We had a short shower but I don't things will be too wet to plant tomorrow. Nineteen holes have already been dug for the pepper plants so I should be able to get a lot more peppers and maybe a few more tomatoes in the ground tomorrow.

Thanks for all the input. These things keep gardening interesting. The last of last years sweet potatoes are in a tub of sand putting out slips for planting in June. Okra is up (Just couldn't wait).Most tomatoes have fruit on them and squash are blooming. We're eating lettuce everyday before hot weather causes it to bolt. Herbs are growing like weeds (Cause they are). Chard and asparagus just keep putting out new growth as quick as we can harvest it.

Carol,

I understand what you're saying. Maybe it is an internal issue, but I don't understand it showing up on the plants at the store at the same time. What are the odds?

Bubba,

It sounds like most of your garden is doing great!

If you do have a chance to show the plants to an ag ext service agent, I hope you'll let us know what you find out so we'll all know what it is in case it shows up again sometime.

I don't know if anyone at the Noble Foundation could look at an emailed photo and give you a diagnosis either, but it might be worth a try. Since they have a research facility near Falconhead, you just never know...they may have seen this before.

I absolutely hate to say this for fear of jinxing myself, but my garden looks the best it has ever looked in May. Knock on wood! All the bizarre early warm weather made the potatoes and onions (I planted far too many of both!) grow like mad and I was able to protect them pretty well from the high wind and the very cold temps.

We haven't had a lot to eat from the garden yet, just some radishes, sugar snap peas, green onions, strawberries, some cherry tomatoes and tons of lettuce. Oh, and some chives. I'm afraid the lettuce is trying to bolt. I've already removed some varieties that were sending up seedheads. I guess if I keep doing that, we'll eventually know which lettuce is that last one left standing and I'll dub that the most heat-tolerant variety in our garden.

The tomato plants I transplanted into the ground earliest are about 3' tall and are quite wide and have sizeable fruit. The ones I transplaned a bit later are not quite as large but are coming along very well. The ones in containers in Ferbuary are providing ripening fruit. I have three half-red beefsteak tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter and I can't wait for them to finish ripening so we can eat them. The peppers are beginning to bloom.

If the weather behaves itself a bit better than it did in March or April, I expect a great garden year. However, the weather also can wipe out the garden in a heartbeat.

My herbs are growing like weeds too, and my weeds are growing like weeds too! I was out shortly after daybreak to weedeat a tall patch of Johnson grass and other weeds that were just outside my garden fence and threatening to creep in under/through the fence. I was out so early because it was too cold for the snakes to be moving around. I only weedeat tall stuff when the snakes are least likely to be there.

Dawn

It almost looks like it has some thrips damage. But it also looks like the internal cells had some freeze damage and then were scalded by the sun.

Is there anything on the underside of the leaves to give us more clues?

But out of all the searches i have done, it resembles malathion damage the most. But i am not convinced that is the problem.

I hope you find out through the OSU guy and let us know.