Cat22 - my deepest, sincere, heartfelt sympathy at your loss. Seriously!!! I know how you feel. It hit me last year. I didn't have as many plants, only around 20 or so, but a lost tomato plant is a lost tomatoe plant. Not too mention you'll drive by other gardens and look longingly at their plants. I've done those drive-bys, yes, I admit it.

Is it too late to systemically treat your plants with something that might post-pone the progress of the disease? Maybe some of guru's can chime in on this.

Paula

After our experience last year...I FEEL YOUR PAIN!! It's so disheartening to see that happen and not really be able to stop it :(....I, too, would be interested in knowing what in the world we're supposed to do with this; are there any processes that would cut this short?

Sharon

Yeah it is totally heartbreaking to pour so much love into a plant and lose it. :(

I'm so sorry.

Thanks, guys. Okies really are the best. :) I've resigned myself and my beer and I are at peace. Somewhat. Question, though, are the tomatoes safe to eat? I thought about at least frying some of the green ones up. I have good-sized beefsteaks on a lot of them, and some of the smaller tomatoes are blushing. I assume they are, but with my luck, I'd get a bacterial infection too.

Cat22woman,

I hardly know where to begin, so I'll start by saying that I'm truly sorry to hear about your apparent problems with bacterial wilt.

For all the rest of you who've never had bacterial wilt on your tomato plants, there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent it or to halt its progression once plants are infected. There are two forms of bacterial wilt...one that progresses very quickly and one that progresses very slowly....but the end result is that the plants die, the soil is infected and a gardener is very discouraged and must work hard and focus seriously on crop rotation to avoid an annual repeat of the same type trouble.

Cat22woman, Did you cut the stems of affected plants, stick them in a clear container of water, and watch to make sure you saw the threadlike milky ooze that is characteristic of bacterial wilt. Although I think it likely your plants have bacterial wilt, I wouldn't be content with the diagnosis unless I got that milky ooze in the glass of water for verification. And, it may comfort you somewhat to know that you can indeed eat the fruit. The bacterium that causes bacterial wilt is not harmful to people.

I assume the folks on the Tomato Forum and the Tomato Pest and Disease Forum gave you guidance on what to do in terms of disposing of your dead plants and such. Have you gardened in this soil before and, if so, have you had bacterial wilt on any plants in that soil before? And, if you have cucumber beetles around, then yes, it likely will spread everywhere because they can serve as vectors of the disease.

Do you have room to garden in 'new' soil or will you have to do serious soil rehab in order to grow anything next year? Remember that one option is to grow in containers.

Jay may have ideas about fixing your soil. To some degree, you can improve the soil, but it is really hard. In the case of bacterial wilt, sometimes you can make the conditions right for bacterial wilt by using compost, manure or other organic materials that are not completely decomposed so, in this case, be sure you only add fully decomposed amendments to your soil. Finally, you need to get a soil test and see what it tells you. It could be you have pH problems or other problems that contributed to the development of bacterial wilt, but please understand when I say that, I am not in any way 'blaming' you for it...BW can happen to anyone's garden at any time.

You truly have my sympathy. I am sure this development is a huge disappointment and I wish that any of us could come up with a nice, quick 'fix' but there just isn't one.

There's always next year, and normally I'd encourage someone to plant again for fall by planting in containers, but in your case, that honestly is an iffy proposition because even if you clean up all the dead plants and cover the entire garden bed with heavy-duty plastic to solarize it, there's still the fact that BW might exist on other plants and might be vectored to your new plants by insects.

On the other hand, I've had BW hit a plant in a container and it never spread to the plants in the containers around it.

Dawn

Yes they are safe to eat. I made a TON of chow-chow with mine. Also, we solarized....and added a lot of compost into the soil along with a LOT of peat after that. Then tilled the ground several times. My tomatoes are in the same garden but at a different end and so far, they are really healthy plants. We also laid a drip irrigation system out of pvc that will move the other garden area across the property next year and I think that has helped.

It's not too late to buy or scrounge new pots and get new soil to plant some back up squash!!!

Carol - you amaze me! How the heck do you get all that done and going with your "special" back? My hat's off to you, my friend! You and your DH need to be sure and stop by next time your in our area! We'd love to see you again!

Now Cat22....be sure and use that beer for other good uses like trapping the slugs! lol =)

Paula

Thanks Paula. DH says he would like to do that because he liked both of you. We don't come to OKC as much as we did when we first moved here and it always seems like we are rushed. It was great fun to have the swap at your house.

Don't be amazed at me because I am just a stubborn old lady who does just what she wants to do. I never get everything done, and although my garden has weeds in it, it looks better than my house. LOL

My garden is just outside my backdoor, so I go in and out many times a day. Each trip out, I see something to do. Yesterday I was laughing at myself because I took a bowl of scraps out to feed the chickens and came back an hour later. The chicken pen has a door between the run and the main part of their house, and we close it at night. I usually go out after dark to close it after they are all on the roost. Tonight I turned on the back lights, closed the chicken door, and picked up the hoe and cleaned up an area by the green beans. It was dark and there I was working in my garden. LOL Thankfully most of my neighbors can't see into my garden and my DH thinks I'm warped anyway.

I pulled two more today. My Black Cherry, that I was so anxious to taste for the first time, has started wilting. It is on the only row that was wilt-free yesterday. :(

Dawn, thank you for chiming in. I was confused because I took a few different cuttings from different plants and there was no milky anything, even in the water. It sat overnight and there was definitely some kind of something on the bottom, but it didn't stream out, like described. But, since I had watered the first few wilting ones well, and there was no color change on any of the leaves beforehand, it is the only thing that describes it well.

No one on the disease thread has responded, but I was careful when I pulled up the plants, put them in a black plastic bag, and they are sitting in the sun right now. Is there something else I need to do?

This is the first time I have gardened at this house. I spend hours and hours bringing in amendments. I bought all the manure and compost mainly for this garden, but I am thinking it came in on my mulch. There is a huge pile of wood chips at work, and I have brought bags and bags of it home every chance I get. Is this the likely source? How depressing.

I had a soil test earlier in the winter and it came back pretty much needing for everything. I think the soil pH was 5.6. I have added lime to the garden, as well as to each hole when I planted. The plants look wonderful, they've done better than any I've seen until the day they wilt. They are all loaded with tomatoes right now.

I did have my first two cukes today, as well as a Bloody Butcher and a few Matt's Wild cherries. It was very bittersweet eating them knowing they could be the first and last ones I do get to eat. But, I guess I should enjoy them while I can.

Thank you guys so much for the help and sympathy.

Cat22woman,

If you don't see that milky discharge from the plants, it may not be bacterial wilt.

I'll find and link the website of the Oklahoma State University Soil, Water and Forage Analytical Lab. My suggestion is that you send them an e-mail, or call them if there's a phone number on the website, and tell them you have what you believe is bacterial wilt and it is killing your tomatoes. See if they can test your soil and tell you if it is there. If they can, and if the test is reasonable in cost, I'd have it done. It bothers me that you aren't seeing the wilt's oozey stuff coming out of the stems. It usually happens pretty quickly after you put them in water.

If you are not seeing that milky discharge when the stem is put in the water, your plants could have something else...although I am not experienced enough with the more obscure tomato diseases to know what it would be.

Anyway, the website of the OSU lab is linked below. We're lucky to have such a testing service available in our state because in some states, the budgets have been cut so much that those types of testing are hard to find or prohibitively expensive.

Your pH is a little low for tomatoes which do best in a pH of 6.2 to 6.8. Also, if you have sandy loam or sandy soil, you may have root knot nematodes and they tend to damage the roots, opening up the area to invasion by BW. I believe a higher pH...like I have here in southern OK...makes BW less likely and a lower pH makes it more likely. Usually when you have BW, it is during hot and wet conditions, and you really cannot control the moisture that falls from the sky or the temperatures.

I don't know about the wood chips. I suppose it could be in them. I've used partially decomposed wood chips to break up my awful red clay for years though, and I bet I haven't seen 5 plants with Bacterial Wilt in the last 25 years. I'm more inclined to think it might have been in the soil to begin with. It is very hard to figure out where the bacterial wilt comes from because it pops up anywhere and everywhere. Last year it popped up in a container grown plant and I had grown the plant from commercially purchased seed. Was the BW in my container? My soil mix? My seed? Did an insect carry it to the plant from someplace else? From where? Nothing else in my garden had Bacterial Wilt. See, thinking about it will drive you nuts.

When Jay sees this thread, he may have additional ideas. He's away at a class for a couple of days, so he may not be online as much the next couple of days, but be patient because he'll see this thread pretty soon, I think.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: OSU Soil Testing Lab

It almost sounds like the year I used hay for mulch and all of mine wilted in the same day. I think that was the same year that a lot of people had damage because of herbicide in the hay. My husband saw one of our friends last week and she said her husband was just sick because he had gotten herbicide drift in his garden while working on a pasture. He is a big gardener so I know he just wanted to cry.

Cat22woman,
I feel for you. Like Dawn said I'm at school in CO. And away from my notes. So will have to go on my memory that has crashed. I had 2 Goliath plants die of sudden wilt last year. One day they looked fine. The next day all of one plant was limp and half on another. The whole plant on the last one was wilted on the 2nd day. They were at least 45 ft apart with several plants in between. It was either a coincidence or had to be in the seeds. Nothing oozed out of them either. I wasn't convinced it was wilt on account of that. So planted in the same container the one was in this year. The other one was in the ground and I rotate the area where I plant my in ground tomatoes every year. I have only had a couple of plants that have ever oozed. That was 3-4 years ago.

What Dawn said is pretty much the accepted and proven treatments. Like with anything there are many opinions about treatment. But most are not proven so I won't mention any of them.

I will be watching closely this year. To see if any of my plants show wilt again this year. I first noticed a problem about 4 years ago. I left the water on my old drip/soaker hose combo on all night. Only one plant showed any problems. The next day it was as limp as a rag. It was mid July and too late to replant. It gradually recovered. It lost several leaves that died. But it came back and set heavily right before frost. It seems every year since I've had at least one plant act the same way. Last year was the first time any died. If I lose one this year I will probably send it too the KSU lab and have it tested if they will do it.

I've also used a mix of old and new manure in the past. Haven't added any the last 2 years. My PH levels are on the other end. In the 7.2-7.5 range. I have used a regional commercial mix in the past and always noticed my garden seemed to do a little better when I used it. I found an old bag with a little left in it this week. I had forgot it had iron and sulfur in it also. So that explains with my PH why the plants did better. I'm mixing in a lot of sulfur this year per the recommendations from those who did my soil tests. Jay

Let us know how the rest of your plants do. Hopefully the majority will survive. Jay

Thank you for replying. Does that mean there is a chance some of them will avoid it and/or recover? Perhaps I was a little too fast on pulling them? How many days did it take before you saw a recovery in the ones that did recover? In the tomato thread someone suggested pulling them up immediately, but is this really going to stop it? Perhaps I should give them a chance to recover? I just don't know. I do know it really hurts my feelings to pull one and I apologize profusely to them as I do it.

I can move across the yard next year, I guess. I have about 1/3 acre, so it won't be too far. I hate it because when I first tilled the ground, and subsequently tilled in all the goodies, I never found one worm. When I pulled up the plants, a bunch of big ol' fat ones were falling back down to the ground. Paranoid me thought "oh, no, they will spread the bacteria", but I could never bring myself to kill a good earthworm. I worked hard to attract them.

I guess I'm almost over my pity party, but it will be really hard if/as they all die. I used to make about 20 trips a day to obsessively check them for potential ripeness, or anything that might be eating my tomatoes before me. Now, I hesitate to go out there because I don't want to see the damage or possibly spread the bacteria.

Tracy,

It might be different with plants in the ground. I left mine in the container. I think it died in June so I thought it was too late to replant anything in that container, and it was at the far end of the row so no one but me ever walked past it, and so I left it there--the poor dead plant. About 6 weeks later, it regrew---presumably from the roots. It did fine the rest of the year, although it remained pretty short but it did produce a heavy load of tomatoes, and we ate them. It was a Mountain Princess. Until Jay said his resprouted, I thought my was just an odd fluke. Now I find it incredibly interesting that he has had them resprout too. I didn't take any chances with that container this year. I dumped out its soil and refilled it with fresh stuff, and planted flowers in it instead of tomatoes, I think.

The experts on the Tomato Forum probably would say Jay and I should have removed the plants so the disease wouldn't spread, and they probably are correct technically. However, sometimes I break a few rules....and I expect Jay does as well.

I think if your soil is wet/moist, you might have to worry about spreading the disease but if your part of the state is as dry as mine, then it is less likely. BW is most common during periods of very hot, very wet weather. I'm sure someone at the Tomato Forum told you to clean your shoes (I use Chlorox wipes) and tools to avoid spreading the blight.

Hooray for the earthworms. I have no idea if they spread disease, but I wouldn't think so although, technically, I guess they could since they're moving around in the soil.

You may never see BW again. It is hard to say. I grow tomatoes in the same soil because I grow so many that I can't really rotate unless I build an entirely new second garden plant and rotate from one to the other each year. If your tomato plot is completely empty now or mostly empty, I'd plant one of the recommended rotation crops there right now....more just to break the cycle of the bacteria than to get a crop. Since our growing season is long, you could get 1 or 2 rounds of rotation crops in there and grown and that would help the soil.

Dawn

Tracy,
It comes down to there are no cut and dried rules when growing plants. There are some better practices but that doesn't mean if you don't follow them you will have a total failure. I know some growers who had late blight problems back east last season and with spray they kept plants of special grow outs alive long enough to harvest fruit for seeds. So they could continue their grow outs and not lose a year. Most would say pull them at the first signs of LB. And where you did't see the ooze and I didn't also I'm not convinced we had the BW. Chances are we might have but everyone says you should see the ooze. So something doesn't add up. Jay

I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for your plant loss.

It's so much work, I really hate it for you -- hope at least a few of them survive.

Who's Tracy? ;)

Sorry, I've been in Tulsa the past couple of days for a ceremony for work. I was dreading what I would see when I came back. There are about 4 more tomato plants wilted, but on the bright side, I picked two Black Cherries today, so I will get to try them after all!

So, I'm not completely convinced that it is the Bacterial Wilt either. After talking to several people I have two new suspects, but I would like to get you experts opinions.

One guy suspected nematodes, but I didn't think this was it since there didn't seem to be any deformities of the roots. I suppose there are enough different types of nematodes that this is not a complete diagnostic, but from what I read, it didn't seem like it should kill the plants, or at least as many as it has.

Another I have heard from a couple of older, experienced farmers is too much fertilizer. Now, I have not added anything since I planted out in mid-April. When I dug the hole, I put in some epson, lime, chicken manure, Tomato-tone and earthworm castings. Then I put a few inches of soil over that. I suppose the roots could just now be coming into the fertilizer, but it doesn't seem likely to me that this is the problem since they are wilting within days of each other and I would assume there would be some kind of "burn" if this was the problem.

I am just at a loss. The technician in me is trying to find the diagnosis for this problem and it's just not happening.

I didn't get a chance to call my local extension office (wish I still lived in Stillwater!), but I will be taking a plant and soil sample on Monday to see if they can help.

Once again I thank you greatly for your input.

Cathi

Cathi,

Carol (soonergrandmom) suggested it, but you might give a little more thought to a herbicide problem. You mentioned you had brought home wood chips from work. Are they amended into the soil, laid as a mulch? Are they throughout your garden among other plants? Do you know where the wood chips came from? Any chance they could have been mulch in a prior life and been subjected to herbicide spraying? Give a little more thought to this. Just a hunch.

Cathi,

Oops, sorry I called you Tracy. I don't know where that come from, except I've been talking with Traci on other threads.

Nematodes are a possibility. The type of nematode damage I'm familiar with usually causes yellowing of foliage and you'll see those galls on the roots. However, there are some types of nematodes that can cause wilting and may not cause visible galls, so I think that's a possibility if you have sandy soil or sandy loam. My neighbors who have sandy soil a couple of miles south/southeast of me say nematodes get their plants by June every year, but we plant earlier here than y'all do there (and I have gotten them to garden in containers which mostly eliminates the nematode problem).

I have never seen overfertilizing kill plants in the ground that quickly unless a large amount of fresh manure was used and it wasn't fully composted.

What happens if a plant wilts and you leave it alone? Does it die and turn brown? Or does it sit there wilted and green for a whole day? Do any growths of any type show up near the base of the plant shortly after it wilts and dies.

To be honest, when I hear the words "green wilted plant" in terms of a tomato plant, I do automatically think Bacterial Wilt or severe waterlogging or root damage. I don't think of nematodes or fertilizer burn, but that's just me and it is based on what I've experienced in my life.

I wonder if.......if you took cuttings of healthy plants before they showed the wilting, if those cuttings would root and grow and could be planted in a container or elsewhere in the yard to give you a fall crop? Sometimes I do that if I see a plant going downhill--I take a cutting from the healthiest part of the plant and root it so I have my replacement plant 'just in case'.

As Jay and I both said earlier, the BW seems less likely to us if you don't see the milky discharge in a cup of water. That makes me doubt the BW diagnosis although normally BW would have been my first 'guess' in this type of situation.

Is there any chance that rainwater or irrigation could have washed a chemical herbicide into your garden from elsewhere....like if someone put down a granular weed-and-feed in a nearby area or something. There's always a slim chance your amendments were contaminated with something. Do your other plants that are not tomato plants show any signs of anything or is the damage restricted solely to tomatoes?

Is there a chance anything you've used as a soil amendment or mulch could have been contaminated with a herbicide like aminopyralid or clopyralid? Residuce of those herbicdes has survived composting and has contaminated compost, esp. manure or hay or straw, in the last 10 years.

Finally, if it is BW, there are a handful of plants with some resistance to it, so it is possible you still could grow tomatoes in that soil, although I'd likely solarize it first.

I hope the Black Cherries you tried were tasty.

Marcy,

I have considered this. The mulch is my biggest suspect, and I had just thought perhaps herbicide was a problem. I did add some in the soil around February or March, but not througout the whole garden. The mulch came from contractors who chipped up the dead trees in the parks. To my knowledge, we do not use herbicide on any of the trees. Now, where this wood chipper had been before it chipped ours is anyone's guess. I suppose and would not be surprised if it had chipped up trees that were exposed to herbicides.

That said, what is the amount of time it would take to kill plants? I assume it would need rain to really expedite the wilting. Also, there is a good month or so between when I mulched the tomatoes on the first couple of rows and when I mulched the last row (last week). Some had already began wilting when I added the mulch last week. I spend a lot of time thinking about this.

I give my neighbor dirty looks every time I see her out spraying her Round-Up, but she can't see them that far away. I've debated talking to her about it, but after hearing her yelling at her son in the yard numerous times, I haven't. I didn't think that it would drift that far, in a concentration to see this much damage, but I'm sure I could be wrong. I have seen some leaf curling that is consistent with herbicide damage. Is there some way I can protect them from this?

Dawn,

No problem. I just thought you were answering someone named Tracy back for a while. :)

Sorry, I must have been typing when you replied. To answer your questions that have not been answered in my reply to Marcy:

The plant stays wilted and green for a good 2-3 days before it starts turning crispy. I've only let one sit there for longer than that so far and it did start turning brown. I will see what these wilty ones do.

As for growths near the bottom, there are bumps like it is trying to grow adventitious roots, but they don't get that far.

I have about 20 plants from cuttings, well, actually "accidents" growing in my window. They all have roots. When I was trying hard to keep every branch in check and in the cage, I broke off quite a few, and didn't have the heart to throw them away, so I put them in water. I finally just gave up and let them start growing out of their cages. I don't think I have the heart or money to invest in containers right now, but it is a possibility.

Also, my soil is very sandy. It surprises me that I don't have to water it a lot more often. The drainage is superb and I can't see water running off to my yard (no slope either), so I don't think that is a problem.

Thanks again for your help everyone!

Cathi

Cathi --

I haven't been able to get your dilemma out of my mind and I think I have the answer. For the last several days, I have had two pepper plants that were green and wilted. The marigolds planted around them were wilting badly also, which was odd. At first I chalked it up to them being in the very hottest part of my kitchen garden and watered them heavily. I haven't had to water much so far this year. It puzzled me that the pepper plants immediately next to them seemed fine, along with the marigolds and herbs planted around them. Now they are dying bit by bit and I know why: about ten days ago, I used Roundup on some bermuda grass that was insisting on coming up through pondliner and heavy mulch. These two pepper plants were in the closest proximity to the area that I sprayed. So, the Roundup drifted, even though I was very cautious. I knew I should have used my cotton glove system rather than spraying... dang it! Anyway, they are easily replaced, but I think you may have fallen victim to your neighbors' Roundup, especially if they have sprayed with any wind at all stirring.

Hope this solves your mystery since it doesn't seem to be BW.

Marcy

Cathi,

There's really no way to protect your plants from herbicide drift. If I physically see a spray rig out at the ranch across the street from my garden, I run outside and set up a sprinkler between my garden and the spray rig and water the air between my garden and the spray rig. Well, the ground gets watered but that's not why I'm doing it. I want the droplets of water from the sprinkler to interact with the misty herbicide drift and essential knock it down out of the air before it reaches my garden.

It could be Roundup drift as Marcy suggested, and it has been known to drift up to one mile, so it could happen to your plants and you've never know where it came from. I've linked a photo from Vegetable MD Online that shows photos of tomato plants damaged by Roundup. Did your foliage look like this for a day or two, and then completely wilt?

The adventitious root nubs that are trying to form are just trying to tell you the plant is stressed and is trying to heal itself.

Did anyone use a weed-n-feed chemical fertilizer within 10 or 15 feet of your garden?

I don't feel comfortable with the BW diagnosis still, and I am not sure about the glyphosate. If that had happened, I would have expected all the plants to go downhill in a fairly short time span.

Is it still occurring with whatever plants you have left?

If you feel like it is aerial herbicide drift, the good news is that you can replace your dying plants with new ones because the soil is not contaminated.

Finally, you've probably already thought of this because you sound like an experienced gardener, but are there any walnut trees near your garden? If so, it could be walnut wilt.

I'm still not sure we've figured it out yet and I know that must be very frustrating for you. We are really trying, though!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Did The Plants Look Like This Before They Wilted?

Marcy, thank you for thinking of my poor plants. I'm almost to the point that herbicide is the only logical option, but I'm still having a problem with it. Would it not affect my cucumbers or squash at all or at a different rate? I haven't lost one of those so far (knock on wood really hard!).

Dawn, thank you but this is only the second time I have had a garden. I just spend many hours reading up and researching. This and the other forums have helped me immensely.

I have been going crazy all weekend. 11 plants gone and about 6 more wilted. I took a limb to work today and had some of the guys look at it. We dissected it and looked under a (weak) microscope. Everything in the vascular system looked good, except the pith was kind of hollow and white and webby looking. I will cut open a healthy one tomorrow to see how it looks and compare the two. Plus I plan on going to the extension office and possibly contacting a local master gardener that the other rangers have recommended.

To answer your questions: No walnut trees anywhere near. I learned about this in my field botany class. I tried explaining this to my dad, but since he is older and wiser, and his garden is doing fine, he thought I was mistaken. :)

The others are wilting. Very random pattern, but I assume some varieties are more succeptable to the problem than others. It had been doing well at avoiding my hybrids, but I have a wilted beefmaster and big beef now. No one would have used a weed-n-feed near the garden. I wonder though, since the lady that owned this house before me was apparently obsessed with flowers and weeds (I pull up plastic weed blocker all the time, all over the place) what she might have sprayed or put in the ground. But, I'm stills stumped, because why would it take two months to kill the plant?

It seems like every avenue I go just has something that doesn't add up. I really hope to get some answers tomorrow. Er, today.

Thank you again for your concern and input. I hope to stop this before all the plants are dead.

Cathi,
I've used Round up for years. One of the safest chemicals out there to use if applied properly. It doesn't volatize(form vapors) and drift by vapors. It only kills what the spray comes into contact with. To drift it would have to be applied in winds high enough to carry it. With Round up you wouldn't see any damage for 2-3 days and then it usually takes several days to kill a plant. 2,4-D unless it is 2,4-D Amine will volatize and the vapors can and will affect plants they come into contact with. I use Round up here to keep the bind weed at my boundary and to control the soap weeds. The only chemicals I've found that will do it with little risk to the rest of my plants. Not defending your neighbor just giving you my opinion from several years of using Round Up.

I will be anxious to see what others think. I feel for your loss of the plants. I know the helpless feeling. Did you contact your or the OSU extension service? Hope you find some answers soon. Jay

Jay, that makes me feel a lot better, because I was wondering how to approach the lady without making her get defensive.

OK, just got off the phone with the extension office. The guy asked me to describe my symptoms and without a beat said he's had about a dozen calls in the past 2-3 weeks about the same symptoms. He said he sent the plants off and they tested positive for both bacterial and fusarium (race 2?) wilt. I addressed my concerns that it was not streaming the ooze in water and he said that it would not always do that. He said that the plants had all been very healthy beforehand and that not all of them had any kind of chlorosis or color change before they wilted.

He did make me feel a little better by saying that he had seen some of them pull out of it. He also suggested the resistant varieties, but said he had even seen some of them get affected by it this year. I hate that this has happened to me, but hope none of the rest of you have the same problem! At least I have some answers now, even if they aren't good news.

So, they are still wilting, but my black cherry is fighting hard. Most of it is wilted, but some limbs have stayed alive, so I have hope. If I save the seeds from any plants that might pull through this, would they be more resistant to the disease(s)?

Thanks,

Cathi

Cathi,
Thanks for sharing what you found out. It didn't look like the Round up or 2-4-D damage I've witnessed over the years. Nice to know about the ooze. As a few of the "so called" experts on a few of the tomato forums have said they always ooze if it is bacterial wilt. Now I'm afraid I might have it in my soil in a few spots. I had fusarium wilt for sure last year. And may of had bacterial wilt also.

I'm not saying spray drift doesn't happen and doesn't cause problems. I will say from my experience that it gets blamed many times when it isn't the actual cause. I have had spray drift damage from aerial spraying 3 times in the 16 years I've lived here. 2,4-D damage twice that I know of. Once when I sprayed with a non Amine 2,4-D and the other time when a neighbor sprayed when it was too windy and too hot. Weed spraying should stop when temps go above 80 degrees in my opinion. Jay

Cathi,

Well, at least you have an answer. It is interesting that other people are seeing it. Sometimes we only think about our own gardens and forget that all around us other gardeners in the same type soils and weather conditions might be seeing the same thing.

As far as I know, seeds from affected/surviving plants would not be more disease resistant because disease resistance is genetic. It could be the plants that survive had stronger genetics, though, so saving the seed could give you a stronger plant than seed from another plant of the same variety. However, you need to do Jay's bleach or Oxiclean soak of the seeds to kill off any disease pathogens because many diseases are transferred from one generation to the next via infected seeds, although I don't specifically know if fusarium or bacterial wilt is among them.

Jay, Herbicide drift seems more common here than it is there. Of course, we're a lot 'wetter' than y'all are and have weeds the size of trees. It all depends on the operator and the weather though. A good operator keeps the mist the right size so it won't travel far on the wind. I usually don't get enough drift to kill plants....just to damage the foliage on the side facing the prevailing wind at the time they were spraying east of us. I should just plant a big row of hollies or something on the east side of my veggie garden and let it block the herbicide drift.

The only other time herbicide use by somebody else makes me nervous is when the electric co-op crews are spraying areas under power lines. They use some really strong stuff available only to folks with an applicator's license and sometimes it kills stuff it wasn't sprayed directly on. Usually though, I only lose ornamentals to that stuff.

Dawn