Welcome to the forum.

How sure are you about the diagnosis?

If you are absolutely positive it is TSWV, then the standard recommendation is to pull the plants ASAP and dispose of them by putting them in a trash bag and having them removed from the property. Do not compost them.

If your plants do indeed have TSWV and you allow them to stay there in your garden, then thrips can spread the disease to many other plants, including pepper plants if you're growing them and both monocots and dicots,including everyday weeds and many ornamental plants. Once the disease hits perennial grasses and weeds, you'll likely have it forever. That's why you remove the plants ASAP, so the disease cannot spread and become established. Spraying a pesticide to control thrips has shown only modest efficacy because the thrips spread the disease before they die. Also, other thrips blow in on the wind.

There are other diseases that can be misdiagnosed as TSWV, and if there's any doubt in your mind about the diagnosis, then you should send a plant showing damage to the OSU plant lab for proper diagnosis. If you have a county ag extension office staffed by a Master Gardener, a phone call to that office might be helpful.

If your fruit is showing the ringspot splotchiness, that's all the diagnosis you need. If your fruit look fine, I am not sure what you're seeing is TSWV.

I'll link something with a photo of the diseased fruit and plant. When you look at the photos, do they resemble what you're seeing in your garden?

For the record, if it was my garden and I was sure of the diagnosis---and I mean sure beyond the shadow of a doubt, I'll yank those suckers so fast their heads would spin, if tomato plants had heads.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: TSWV from UC-Davis

Like Dawn said welcome to the forum rstorch. I've had plenty of experience with TSWV over the last 3-4 years. I believe it was 4 years ago that I lost probably 40% or more of my plants to it alone. And I had over 100 plants that year. I agree with what Dawn said. If the plant has fruit then the diagnosis is easy. Without fruit then it can be more difficult. And if the fruit is very small you might not see any signs on the fruit. I look for the bronzing on the leaves. You won't always see it but most of the time I do. If I see it I yank it right away. I have waited to save fruit from a variety I really wanted seeds from. But don't anymore. You are basically gambling you won't have any more thrips visit. If you do you will lose more plants. I've had enough now where I have little doubt. Like Dawn said if there is any doubt send a plant off. I haven't sent one off for sometime as I feel comfortable making the call now. I'm sure I may err once in a while but it is better to err on the side of caution rather than the other way. The best prevention it too keep the thrips away. The problem is they are like the psyllids. Many times they have already moved on before you see any signs of TSWV. There is a big disagreement among growers whether it is best to remove all growing hosts(which most extension services suggest) or to leave some the thrips prefer instead of tomatoes. I know growers who feel they have cut their TSWV occurences down by providing preferred hosts. I always try to eliminate all host plants. Bindweed is one of their favorites and my neighbors have enough they should never feed on my tomatoes if that was the case. And I can't control their bindweed. The other measure that I have found might reduce it some is another preventative measure. And that is to spray with garlic spray on a regular basis. The spray seems to repel the thrips to some extent. Again if you are certain you have it I personally would yank the plant. Jay

rstorch, I meant to mention that for next year it might be wise to plant some varieties that have some tolerance of TSWV bred into them. A couple that come to mind are Amelia, BHN-444 and Talledaga. I am sure Jay can list a bunch more than that. While there is no such thing as a tomato variety that totally resists TSWV, some of these have great tolerance of it and increase your chances of getting a good crop next year. It is important to break the cycle of infection because you do not want for this to be a problem every year.

Jay, You know, they cannot control their bindweed either, no more than I can control mine, although I sure keep trying. It is one of those one step forward, two steps back kinds of things!

Dawn

I need to do chores and head to work. Will post some more on my thoughts about varieties, ect later. Jay

I'm going to try and figure out how to post a few pics here in a minute. In the meantime, the thing that made me think it was for sure TSWV was a tomato that had ripened with the weird marbling. Sigh. I'll try to confirm first. I have lots of pretty tomatoes, but they are getting smaller and smaller. =(

Marbling can occur for other reasons, and particularly in high temperatures and if you have heavy stinkbug activity. Lately I've had some large-fruited tomatoes with the most severe and widespread stink bug damage I've ever seen, and to an untrained eye they absolutely could look like fruit from plants with TSWV. That's why I want for you to make sure before you rip out the plants. Many tomato issues look similar and it is always best to be confident in your diagnosis before your start removing plants. Except when you are dealing with late blight (which is rare in Oklahoma), there are few tomato issues that demand such urgent plant removal that you cannot take your time and be sure of the diagnosis.

Dawn

I apoligize in advance for this post being long.First when you say marbling. In the fruit surface smooth an round or is the area where the color is different raised? Many times the fruit will feel bumpy in those areas to me. The areas will be slightly raised. The skin will be smooth. I've studied this disease and talked to many about it. There are many opinions and now I have some of my own. There are several good sources of info on it. I like the information provided on the Cornell site. Here is a a link to one article on it. http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/factsheets/Virus_SpottedWilt.ht Like stated in this article there are several strains the differences between them along with temperature variations, stage when infected and stress caused by various factors including fruit load will cause slightly differences in symptoms from plant to plant and especially season to season. I know some who feel a plant can be infected but due to good health not show any signs. But still be a carrier. And then if stress issues arise the symptoms may show up. I was skeptical about this for a while but have begin to believe it is highly possible. And why I go back to the old saying " An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."
Now to the resistant varieties. I have grown several but not all of those available. Talladega and Bella Rosa are probably the best I've grown. It is hard to determine how effective they really are. I have had them become infected also. And when only 10-20 percent of the plants become infected it is hard to decided if the resistance really made that much of a difference. The tomatoes are better than nothing is how I'll describe most of them. There are still a couple I want to try. All varieties I know of are determinates. I would have to look back through all of my notes over the last 3-4 years to see what I've grown and what I might be forgetting. The problem I have experienced several times is the TSWV varieties will fall victim to another disease. That is what happened to Talladega last year if memory serves me correctly. This year I didn't plant any TSWV resistant varieties. Instead I decided to try to take measure to maintain the health of the plants and to reduce stress as much as possible. If I have 2-4 days of very hot temps I usually don't see many problems develop. But when I see a 7-10 or longer stretch like we just experienced I start seeing problems. So far I've seem Septoria on one plant and yanked another and have another that may come out soon. I have another 4-5 plants that came out showing the curled leaves and signs of stress. Knock on wood the majority look fine. So in summary if you continue to have problems you can try some varieties and see how they do for you. You may like them and also in your garden and environment you may see more benefit to them. As bad as TSWV is the Psyllid Yellows are worse. I'm just thankful I usually don't have problems with them. When they hit a plant is it over. In contrast I remember back to when I didn't have much disease issues and the raised centers on the lighter spots. I would just throw the fruit away. And many times the plants would survive. Then when the issue became bad did I do research and also got verification to what I had. Then is when I started removing plants when I noticed it ect. TSWV won't always kill a plant and if not severe some say it won't affect the fruit. Plant size may be all that you notice different. Again whether it is a different strain or because of a milder infection due to plant health, ect could only be determined in a lab. For me I feel it is best to err on the side of caution. I will take a chance with the septorai though. I have managed to control it and get fruit from plants. Knowing when to fight and when to give in is part of gardening. Jay

Going to try a few pics of what I am seeing on my plants. They're still hanging in there but more and more branches are dying off. =( I did get some beautiful tomatoes this year which is more than I can say for last year. So, all in all a success still.

this is what starts on the leaves. (I think I have to post a second pic separately)

And then it all goes to crap:

So I'm guessing I should just leave well enough alone. I am removing the dead branches and still have new growth. But even now the virus or what ever is affecting the new growth and new blooms. sigh.

Here is a pic of the marbling I was seeing. It was smooth and frankly, we still ate them bc I didn't know better. Tasted fine and we have had a bazillion stink bugs this year. I can't keep up and they're about to take out my pumpkin plants.

PS Thank you everyone. I really appreciate your responses.

Your leaves don't look to me like TSWV, but then I've only had it on one plant. My plant had multitudes of little dark spots all over them. I removed the plant for fear insects would spread the disease to more plants, so I don't know how the leaves progress after the initial dark spots show up. However, research has shown that while some plants show lots of spotting, others have no spotting at all so any given gardener's understanding of how TSWV looks would depend on what their plants have looked like when they were infected. I don't know why the virus presents in different ways, but it does.

However (and this is why trying to diagnose tomato diseases makes me crazy) your fruit do look a lot like TSWV. In fact, they look more like TSWV to me than anything else I can think of, especially because of those concentric circles on some parts of the fruit. Based on the appearance of your fruit, I do think it is TSWV.

For what it is worth, research has shown that the tomato fruit from plants with TSWV is fine to eat and that the plant virus does not harm humans who eat the tomatoes. In the commercial tomato world TSWV is a huge issue, though, because people do not want to buy fruit whose skin is discolored like that, rendering the tomatoes unmarketable as fresh tomatoes.

If Jay sees this and believes your fruit show something other than TSWV, then you should ignore what I said and go with what he says. Unfortunately for Jay, he has had a lot more experience with TSWV than I have.

For anyone who wants to look at photos of Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, the link below has a lot of them showing the various symptoms.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: IPM Gallery: Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus

Dawn, thank you so much. For what it's worth, I only had that on about 3 tomatoes not the whole lot, so your stink bug analysis may be correct as well. I'll wait on Jay and pray I'm not having to yank those suckers soon!

rstorch, You're welcome. Are you saying that later on you had perfectly healthy fruit? If that is so, I'd bet on stink bugs or heat-induced uneven ripening which can closely mimic the fruit damage of TSWV.

If the disease hasn't spread to more plants, I don't think it will but Jay will know for sure.

Often, the thrips that cause TSWV are only a problem at a specific point in time and any plants that are not affected by them at that time ought to be able to make it through the season.

Dawn

Howdy and welcome, rstorch!

bon

Dawn, what ever it is, is def affecting all of the tomato plants, but as of now, I only have 6 plants. They're about 7 feet tall so if I can get them healthy, I'm sure I'll get lots of fruit after it cools off.

BTW, if it's not TSWV any ideas as to what is going on??

I am sorry to hear it is affecting all your plants. Do none of them show the typical dark spots on the foliage? That just blows my mind.

I still think, based on the fruit, that it is TSWV. I want to hear what Jay thinks when he has time to be online and see this thread.

Diagnosing tomato plant issues by photo can be very tricky because the symptoms of many are identical and often you'll have 2, 3, 4 or more things going on all at once. Unfortunately, a photo is static and shows us the status of a plant at one point on one day. What we really need when trying to diagnose an issue is to see the plant every day and see how the disease, pest issue or physiological issue developed from day one and how it progressed.

People who are university-trained in disease diagnosis probably could look at your plant and give you an instant answer, but we normal gardeners just cannot look at a photo for a few minutes and provide a surefire diagnosis. We need to see it developing and advancing in order to offer out best guesses.

For example, what if we were looking at a photo of a tomato plant that simultaneously had Early Blight, Septoria Leaf Spot, the Leveillula form of Powdery Mildew and Spider Mites? Could any of us diagnose all 4 of those on the same plant from looking at a photo? I doubt it. Usually when a tomato issue exists, multiple issues exist, so diagnosis from photos with no understanding of how each issue began and developed gets tricky.

As long as the plants are producing edible fruit, I would leave them alone. If the issue is stink bugs or heat-related uneven ripening, that explains the fruit issues but not necessarily the foliage issues. And, based on the concentric circles on some of the fruit in your photos, I cannot imagine it is anything else but TSWV. You also see concentric rings on fruit with buckeye rot, but your fruit aren't getting rotting, brown spots which rules that out.

I cannot remember if we discussed the stems. Are your stems on the plants--especially the main stalks--totally green and disease-free or do you see any kind of brown or gray lesions on them?

I'll add my 2 cents about the photo. I didn't read back through all of the posts. As I need to get outside, water and do a few things. Had seen Dawn's post yesterday but wanted to wait to comment till I had a few minutes to give it some thought and read a couple of my marked sites I use for identification. First I will say my initial impression is I'm not convinced it is TSWV. Coloration in a photo can be deceiving. Another problem is if I knew the variety and color of ripened fruit it might help a little. And after reading Dawn's link I'm not sure I've been properly diagnosing everything that has TSWV. It has made me consider sending at least one plant off for disease ID diagnosis. The two sites I use the most often are Cornell and Texas A&M although I have 3-4 more marked I consult on TSWV and a few other diseases. None of the discolored areas seemed to be raised in the picture. The stems look to have a nice color of green and the leaves don't appear to exhibit the symptoms I normally look for. Many times if the disease has progressed to any extent the plant will be stunted. The growing tips will die, the veins on some leaves will usually turn purple and usually roll/curl, the leaves and stems many times will turn a bronze color. Like mentioned on some sites the severity of the infection will determine to some extent the symptoms you see. I've seen a few fruit exhibit the ringspots, discoloration and raised spots and other fruit ripen normally. And I was certain these plants had TSWV before the season was over. If a person feels the thrips have moved on then they can let the fruit on an infected plant ripen. The plant probably won't grow much if any more and usually most of the flower buds will die when they form and never set fruit. But again I've seen exceptions. The first signs I look for are stunting, bronzing of the leaves and stems and purple veins on the plants. Then on the fruit I watch for the coloration and raised spots. If the discoloration is smooth and no raised areas then I'm usually doubtful unless several of the other symptoms are present. On the fruit did you pick it and take it inside to ripen. I'm seen the uneven ripening discoloration go away once I picked it and took it inside to finish ripening. If it does then I would suspect something else. I have had one fruit that exhibited the discoloration this year but not the raised spots. And the rest of the fruit behind it so far have ripened normally. I'm not yet convinced what this plant has. If I felt strongly it was TSWV I would of yanked it. I yanked several with 50-60 fruit on them over the last 14 days with disease issues. A few of them with what I felt was TSWV. Maybe over reaction. I may yank another tomorrow and send it off for identification. The link that Dawn posted has me doubting my diagnosis some. I hate to yank it but can't get a positive ID without doing that. Like Dawn stated many/most of the time a plant maybe infected with multiple diseases. This causes them to show a mix of symptoms and also makes it harder to not only diagnose properly but to make the correct decision about whether to treat/trim or yank a plant. Again I have some doubt that yours in TSWV. The fact all are infected makes it odd. The only time I ever saw most of the plants infected was one year I planted 2 rows 4 ft a part with the south row being just north of my onion rows. I had TSWV on all but one plant in the south row next to the onions. Like 18 out of 19 plants if memory serves me correctly. The row 4 ft to the north had about a 1/3 of the plants infected. The problem is the thrips are attracted to onions and it was easy for them to move over to the tomatoes. They travel mainly with the winds. Our prevailing wind is from the SW. So only natural for them to move to the north row. I don't plant tomatoes next to onions anymore and have reduced my problems. This year I did plant peppers next to them thinking the onions would mature and be out before I had many issues. Most of the onions haven't matured yet. I have a few plants with TSWV I need to yank. I did have minor thrip issues on the onions this year so know they were here. I've ID 3 tomato plants that I feel comfortable with the diagnosis with TSWV this year. There is possibly more but these are those that exhibited enough symptoms I feel 99% certain about. The only positive way is too send a plant to a lab I've been told. If you will provide the information about what you have noticed on the stems, growth habit of the plants, what the top growing tips look like, is there any new growth or blooms, is there any change in color of the leaves. Any sign of leaves or stems bronzing? This info depending on what it is could change my mind about it being TSWV. At this point from the pictures like I stated above I'm doubtful. Jay

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell

New growth and blooms: yes
purplish/bluish veining on the stems: no
bronzing on leaves: this is what gets me. I've come to realize what I think looks like bronzing may not be. I've attached a pic with the progression of the leaves. What ever is going on, I still am getting a few fruit and apparently my plants don't look good enough to the hornworms to bother this year. #silverlining

I still don't feel that it is TSWV. With it the growing tips usually die and the plant will be stunted as the tops won't grow. I have seen some sideways growth but can't ever remember seeing any top growth at least if the plant was badly infected. Like I said before I've seen plants lightly infected survive and ripen fruit. The problem is any thrip that feeds on them then carries the disease to at least the next plant they visit. I'm to the point that I think the longer I grow tomatoes the less I know about them. I sent a plant off to the KSU diagnostic lab today. Hopefully in this heat it will arrive in good enough shape they can tell something about it. But as bad as TSWV is be thankful you don't have the pysllid yellows carried by the pysllids. I'm beginning to think I may have it on at least one plant this year. Will continue to watch. Haven't seen the tell tale sign from the nymphs yet. That is the sure sign you have them. If you have the nymph it seems you will have the disease. And in my opinion it is worse than the TSWV. Where thrips move on the pysllids will stay around longer. I will attach a link from CSU that tells a little about them. Back to your issue. I will continue to think about it but at this point I haven't seen anything that makes me feel it is TSWV for certain. Jay

Here is a link that might be useful: Psyllids

Thanks Jay and sorry about your plants. =( I'm honestly so amazed that what is considered a night shade WEED is so hard to grow well. Ha!