Sheri,

EARLY BLIGHT ON NEW PLANTS:
I'm going to answer the easiest question first, so....if your tomato plants appear to have early blight, give them a chance to outgrow it. Spray them with a solution of 1 tablespoon of baking soda to 1 gallon of water and see if the new growth remains healthy. You can spray them once every 7 to 10 days. By the way, if it were me, I would contact the vendor who sold me diseased plants and ask for (a) replacement plants that are not sick, or (b) my money back. Are you sure that it is early blight? I am hoping your sick plants weren't from Laurel. If they were, you're not the only person to get sick plants from her this year.

A different vendor, who posts often on the Tomato Forum, sells plants at SelectedPlants.com and is getting rave reviews from his customers. Dr. Carolyn Male speaks highly of his plants as do many who have purchased from him. He cannot mention his business on Garden Web, though, or he could get banned from Garden Web.

Do you see the irregularly-shaped dark-colored necrotic lesions surrounded by a yellow chlorotic area on the leaves of the new plants? Any chance it might be bacterial speck or bacterial spot, which would be more common than early blight on young plants?

BLOSSOM END ROT:
Blossom End Rot, in and of itself, does not actually spread from plant to plant because it is not a systemic disease--it is not fungal or bacterial--it is considered a noninfectious disease, so it does not spread from plant to plant.

Blossom End Rot is caused by a calcium deficiency in the distal end of the fruit. Often, the problem is NOT that your soil is deficient in calcium, but rather that certain conditions exist which affect calcium uptake. You most often see BER during alternating periods of high soil moisture/low soil moisture as well as during times of rapid plant growth. When you are relying ONLY on irrigation to water your plants, you are less likely to see BER because you can keep your soil moisture level relatively constant.

Unfortunately, though, with the kind of weather we have had this year, you really have little if any control over your plants' soil moisture. About all that you can do is make sure that when the rain stops, you keep the plants' soil moist, but not sopping wet.

Also, plants that have received excess nitrogen are more prone to BER, so be sure your plants are not getting too much nitrogen. This can be hard to do, for example, if your plants receive rain run-off from a lawn that was fed a high-nitrogen fertilizer. Excess nitrogen, especially if derived from an ammonium form, increases the plant's demand for calcium, which further reduces the amount of calcium in the soil.

Sometimes BER is caused by soil that has excessive soil salinity, but that tends to happen in highly-fertilized farm fields where fertilizer salts build up in the soil over time. It also can develop if your plants have damaged roots.

Whether to leave the fruits on the plants once they have BER is a difficult question to answer. If the plant has plenty of fruit, and some have BER and some do not, I go ahead and remove the BER-affected ones. However, if all the fruits on a given plant have BER, I leave them, taking my chances that the BER will not go deeply into the fruit, and that I will be able to cut off the BER end and salvage the rest of that tomato. Sometimes the BER goes only a little below the surface and looks more brownish. If it turns really black, though, it probably does deeper and the fruit can't be saved.

By the way, there is also an INTERNAL form of BER. If you cut into a fruit that looks fine from the outside, and find black rot inside, that probably is the internal form of BER.

WILT
Wilting leaves can mean a whole host of things, and you'll have to think about your plants' growing conditions and figure it out.

IF the sun has finally appeared and the plants aren't used to it, they will wilt during the day and recover overnight. The same thing can happen if the weather suddenly warms up quite a bit and they are not used to the heat. This is because all their tender, succulent leaves have not been used to receiving sunlight or extreme heat. Over a period of days, as they become more accustomed to the sunlight and warmer temperatures, the wilting should occur less and less.

IF the ground is really, really waterlogged and the roots can't breathe, wilting can occur. If this goes on long enough, the plants will die. Usually, thought, there is some leaf yellowing if this is the problem.

IF it is the younger leaves that are wilting, and then they are turning an odd blue-green and curling UPWARDS, you may bave a copper deficiency.

IF otherwise healthy plants have a peculiar form of stunting that includes the wilting/curling of foliage and stunted growth, it could be that a herbicide sprayed somewhere else drifted in on the wind and affected your plants.

IF the foliage declines in appearance and wilts fairly suddenly, does not recover overnight, and the foliage IS discolored, and the fruit has concentric ring discoloration or yellow chlorotic rings, it could be Spotted Tomato Wilt.

IF the foliar wilt is manifesting itself as an upward cupping of the foliage and the foliage then begins to yellow somewhat, it could be tomato yellow leaf curl.

Many other viral and bacterial diseases cause some wilting, but you ought to be seeing other symptoms, too, if that is the problem with your plants.

Finally, my plants experienced distorted growth and wilting earlier this year, which I finally figured out was caused by the heavy rains' continual leaching of nutrients from the soil. I fed them all the Miracle Grow tomato food one time and they came right out of the nutrient deficiency.

As long as a plant is blooming and setting new fruit I let it live. Once it is declining to the point that no new fruit is forming, or I can tell it is declining so rapidly that small fruit will not mature, I take it out. My plants are also so close they pretty much touch, and I do not see any form of disease spreading from one to another.

Don't let the tomato problems discourage you. Excessive rainfall is the worst thing for tomato plants, so we just have to muddle along and do the best we can for our plants since we have no control over the weather. Even plants that look HORRIBLE will often produce wonderful fruit. Remember that your goal is TOMATOES, not nice-looking plants. (I have a hard time with that one myself because I want to have nice-looking plants AND fruit.)

This year I have not removed one single plant from my beds until it is completely dead on its own. Some plants that appeared to be very bad off have bounced back, so I am glad I left them alone.

If you have more questions or need clarification of anything, let me know!

Dawn

Dawn,

On the new plants, it may be bacterial rather than blight, because I don't see the necrotic circles. I have been spraying with the baking soda water since you first told me about it, and sprayed the seedlings too. I did not order from Laurel, I ordered from someone off of ebay instead. I figured if she had healthy plants she would have sent them to begin with, I figured this may be a problem ordering plants this late in the season.

Now for the wilting on the planted tomato plants, there was alot of yellowing leaves starting on the bottoms of the plants and progressing upward, I had been taking them off. I had just sprayed with baking soda/water 3 days ago, when I noticed the wilt on some leaves. I was gone Monday, and Tuesday evening........big shocker....all of my plants except the Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, ARGG, are all covered in yellow leaves, practically overnight!! The big boy is almost completely yellow, except for the top. Most of the others are turning fast though, starting at the bottom and going upwards.I have been removing leaves from one plant and then the next, without washing my hands in between, so maybe I spread it that way. I took pics yesterday and today. today I am noticing alot more black specks on most of the yellow leaves, looks like Bacterial speck maybe? Surely I shouldn't take off all of the yellow now? There wouldn't be much left of the plant. I have some Serenade on the way, and have sprayed them with kelp spray. I will try to post some pics of the leaves.
Thanks Sheri :(

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Hi Sheri,

I looked at your photo album on Photo Bucket and think you have several fungal and bacterial problems going on at once, which is exactly what one would expect to see in the year of all rain/no sunshine.

To me, most of your photos look more like Target Spot, which is a fungal disease caused by Corynespora cassiicola. The small size of the lesions on your leaves are what makes it look more like Target Spot than Early Blight. Also, with Early Blight the leaves are generally a much brighter yellow than what I saw in most of your photos. I did see a little Early Blight as well. You probablly have more Bacterial Spot than Bacterial Speck, because Bacterial Speck develops in cooler conditions (air temps in the 55 to 77 degree range) while Bacterial Spot tends to develop in warmer air temps (75 to 86 degrees).

The general leaf color seems to indicate a bit of a nitrogen deficiency and perhaps some manganese deficiency as well, probably due to all the moisture.

If these were my plants, I might try feeding them with an organic fertilizer of some sort--liquid seaweed, fish emulsion, or compost tea. Or, maybe a spray combining all three. Foliar feeding would be more effective at this point because the heavy soil moisture might prevent nutrient uptake from anything you applied to the soil. For the fungal diseases showing up on the leaves, all you can do is spray with Serenade, a baking soda spray, a copper spray or even Daconil if you are so inclined. Once you start getting a lot of foliar disease, though, it is hard to reverse it. That is why a lot of people begin spraying their foliage from day one (I don't)--preventing foliar disease is much easier (NOT that it is easy) than stopping it once it starts.

Don't be too hard on yourself--EVERYONE around here who has tomato plants has plants that look very much like yours, including me. It is just that kind of year. It is bad enough that we KNOW that early blight always shows up in the late May to late June timeframe, but then this year we have had to deal with an extraordinary amount of foliar diseases caused by the constant moisture. When you consider how much rainfall, cloudy weather and high humidity the plants have had to endure, it is a miracle that our plants are still alive and producing.

Only you can decide whether to remove the yellowing leaves. If you remove too many leaves, your photosynthesis will slow down and plant and fruit growth will stall. Also, if you remove a lot of leaves, the fruits might suffer from sunscald if the sun ever comes out from behind the clouds again. I have been leaving the leaves on the plants for those reasons. Once the leaves drop on their own, then I pick them up and remove them.

Good luck,
Dawn

My tomatoes seem fine, except for a little bit of cracking. I've noticed my first full-sized tomatoes are turning red, and they have one or two little, shallow cracks that run from the top about halfway down the side.

What causes this? I'm not too bothered by them, really, I was just curious.

Hey Jeff,

Are y'all flooded there like we are here?

Susceptibility to such cracking is related to the fruit's epidermis and its strength and ability to stretch. It can be caused by periods of slow (regular) growth followed by periods of fast (excessive) growth. The faster growth usually results from wide differences in daytime versus nighttime temps OR a dry period followed by a wetter period (either rainfall or irrigation) OR a consistently wet period in which the inner flesh of the tomato grows faster than the epidermis can expand.

You cannot do much to prevent it. Some varieties are more tolerant of temperature and moisture variations than others, but in a year like this, cracking is incredibly common.

The cracking tomatoes are fine and can still be eaten, up to a point. However, once they have cracked, secondary problems can develop, like molds or funguses growing in the crack. So, when you have cracking fruit, it is best to harvest it and use it as soon as you can before the secondary problems occur.

Dawn

Dawn,

Thank you for the advice. That puts me at ease knowing that others have plants in similiar shape already, I just realized how fast the yellowing leaves were moving, and got scared that they were all gonna go down fast like the big boy.

On the Blossom end rot problem, could it possibly be prevented by picking the blossoms off before they fall off on their own? I have noticed on of some the tomatoes that have had BER, the blossom has appeared to be dried up and stuck to the end of the tomato.

I will do the compost tea/seaweed spray tonight. I'll bet they are pretty deficient, I have had A LOT of blossom drop. Thanks Sheri

Sheri,

The blossoms themselves have nothing to do with blossom end rot. It is really just a physiological problem involving calcium uptake, and the blossom has nothing to do with that--once the fruit has set, the blossom is just "an innocent bystander". You can pick the blossom off after a fruit has formed, but it won't have any effect either way.

I think you and I both should be VERY grateful that our plants are alive and producing in this wild and wacky weather, because it appears we are in the minority who are having success.

One of my "old rancher" neighbors stopped by to see me yesterday. He said he was being nosy and just wanted to know how my tomatoes were doing. I told him that it was a rough year and that I was getting ripe tomatoes, but not as many and not as early as in previous years. He told me that "no one" in Love County was getting any tomatoes at all---well, that is, except for the two of us.

He ran down the long list of tomato growers we both know, and some that I don't know, describing what was wrong with their plants or what had happened to their plants. He described the plants of one of his friends who farms down on sandy river-bottom soil as being totally defoliated ("not a single leaf") and wanted to know why. I told him I assumed they were in high water underground since he was so close to the river, and that the leaf drop was a sign the plants weren't going to make it. He said that was what he thought too.

He then asked me what I was doing with my tomatoes, and I told him we'd been eating them. I told him I made a big pot of spaghetti sauce earlier in the week, and a big pot of tortilla soup later in the week. He asked if I made them with my green tomatoes, and I told him I used ripe ones. (I didn't really understand his question----was he trying to imply I didn't have ripe tomatoes?)

Anyway, I think maybe he was hoping I would offer him some of our ripe tomatoes---but I didn't. I have plans for them, and I know he IS getting ripe tomatoes, so I am not giving him mine. What I think he REALLY wanted was for me to give him 5 or 10 gallons of ripe tomatoes to take and give away to all his farmer/rancher buddies who have suffered a tomato crop failure this year. I did that in 2004, but I am not giving as many away this year because I feel like the harvest could cease anytime, especially if the rain continues.

So, there you have it....I am being selfish and stingy and not giving away tomatoes this year, and I am unapologetic about it. In the good years, I give away hundreds of tomatoes, but in the bad years, everyone else is on their own. After what I have had to go through to get this harvest, it is not walking out the door with someone else. Isn't that a terrible attitude--I am NOT usually like that. I really cherish each and every tomato I get this year, though, because it has been such a hard year and a large harvest is not guaranteed. With six inches of rain since Friday evening, I am afraid my plants are in serious trouble.

Watch your plants---they can go downhill VERY fast at this point. If the yellowing progresses rapidly up the plants, you can take cuttings from the healthiest foliage at the top of the plant and root them in water or soil. In just a couple of weeks those cuttings will provide you with new plants in case yours decline/die quickly.

I have gone from a garden full of semi-healthy plants to a garden full of dead plants in about a month's time in very rainy weather. Once the sun comes out and begins stressing plants already stressed by excessive moisture, early blight and other problems gather steam like a fast freight train.

Dawn

Dawn,

I am in the same boat, I have told a lot of people that they would be getting tomatoes. That makes sense about the heat stressing the sick plants, because that is when they all turned yellow overnight, was two days that the sun was out and it heated over 90 here. I am putting my sick fall tomatoes in, and I am going to order a few for containers when Darrel starts selling them again in 5 weeks, I am just going to pick some short season plants for the containers. Do you save seed from tomatoes that come off of the sick plants, or just order your seeds? And the tomatoes that appear to have some bacterial spots on the fruit, are they safe to eat? Thanks Sheri

Sheri,

I do not save seeds at all, and in the eyes of most heirloom tomato growers, that probably makes me a terrible person.

As close together as I plant my 140 plants (2.5' to 3' apart), there undoubtedly would be some crossed seed, so I buy from commercial vendors in order to ensure that I have pure seed (and even with commercial vendors, ESPECIALLY certain ones, there is still a chance of crossed seed).

Most packets of seed have a minimum of 30 seeds per packet, and I might plant 6 or 8 of one variety, so a packet will last me 3 or 4 years. In addition, some companies, like Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds often put more (sometimes a whole lot more) than 30 seeds in a packet.

I think you will be pleased with Darrel's plants. Something has apparently gone quite wrong with Laurel's this year, according to what I have seen lately on the Tomato Forum.

You can save healthy-looking tomatoes off sick plants if the plant's problems are physiological or bacteria, but I don't know that it is advisable to save seed from virally-infected plants.

Tomatoes that appear to have some bacterial spots or spots on the fruit are perfectly fine for eating. If looking at them bothers you, peel the tomatoes. :)

Horrendous rain and flash flooding here is attempting to kill what is left of my garden.

I expect to spend much of today out with the VFD, pumping water out of people's homes. Our home is fine....thank God for the high ground we built on.

Hope your weather there is lovely today, ours here is not!

Dawn

Dawn, your story about your rancher friend makes me HAVE to tell you about my neighbor. She has the same birthday as my mother, with whom I never got along, because she was bossy and downright mean, so even though I don't really believe in astrology, I HAVE seen the same traits in this neighbor. We "neighbor" with them a little, DH mows their front lawn for them because she's disabled and her husband works and is trying his best to take care of her as well.

Anyway, summer before last she started asking probing questions about how my tomatoes were doing. It seemed they had planted tomatoes in their back yard, but they have too much shade and they had nice plants, no tomatoes. One of the other neighbors, who is a pretty snoopy old gal, took a walk out past the back of my house and had reported to her that my tomatoes were doing great. So my neighbor started saying how sad she was that they didn't have any tomatoes and her DH was having to BUY tomatoes, looking very sad and eyeing me expectantly. As it happened, I was being stingey that year because I wanted to have enough to can for the winter.

Since that didn't work, then she sent her DH over with a plate of pumpkin bars. It's kind of my tradition, when someone sends something over, I return their plate with something in it from me. She knows this. So after I sent the plate back with chocolate chip cookies, she called me and told me they were delicious but she was hoping for tomatoes!!!

By this time I was getting kind of mad. I don't like to be manipulated, I lived with it so long while I was growing up.

I quit going over there entirely. I went ahead and canned my tomatoes. Then in the fall, when the garden was all done, she and her husband came over, uninvited. I was on the phone when they arrived and DH entertained them till I could get off the phone. Unfortunately, we had done some remodeling and they wanted to see, and that included the kitchen, where my open shelves were filled with quart jars of tomatoes, green beans, beets, and pint jars of peach, grape and plum jam.

As soon as I got off the phone I joined them, and the first thing she said to me was, "Oh, and I see you have such lovely jars of canned tomatoes and things! Be sure to think of us if you need a home for that jam. Peach is our favorite!!

You know, I shared a lot of that jam, but not with her, 'cause I was still ticked off.

The next summer, our garden burned up. And they had a few tomatoes, not many, but more than we. I saw the other neighbor going past the back of my house and looking over my shriveled plants. A day or two later, my neighbor calls me up on the phone and said, "You know, I'm not getting many tomatoes, but the ones I do have are DELICIOUS!!" I could just hear her, in her mind, going, "NANNY NANNY POO POO!!!" I was tempted to bake pumpkin bars just to see what she'd do.

Oh, Ilene! I just love it. I was laughing!

You know, I really will share with anyone when I have extra, but I just WILL NOT be manipulated into giving away tomatoes that I have plans for!

My old rancher neighbor is a dear, and I adore both he and his wife, but I am not going to give him buckets of tomatoes so he can go be the hero with all his buddies. In general, I will do anything for him, but I just don't have a lot of spare tomatoes this year.

Well, since you are posting here, I guess you have survived the Bartlesville-Dewey flood. Are y'all OK? After seeing the news reports yesterday, I was very concerned about y'all in that corner of the state.

I've been down at Thackerville all day with our fire dept. The guys were pumping water away from people's houses, and I was stuffing them with lots of food and drinks. I have a pot of beans going in the crockpot now, so we have food for tonight in case the current rainshower turns into a deluge which turns into more flooding. (sigh) I don't know how our firefighters do it day after day---they are the best, most dedicated volunteers I have ever seen.

Stay dry and safe.

Dawn