Hi mattpower,

I was just going to start a thread about Fusarium in my garden, but since our questions are similar, maybe I can hitch a ride on your thread. (If anyone thinks this is too confusing, just let me know, and I'll start a new thread.)

My tomatoes have continued to grow, despite the wilt (those troopers!), so I've been in denial that it is in fact Fusarium for about a month and a half. (Plants grow rapidly in our climate (central TX), and it has been a great season--lots of rain, and warm but moderate temps.) The first few plants showed the first signs of Fusarium about six wks after transplanting (in-ground beds), when the plants were a robust 3-4 ft high. Two months later, and the plants are now between 6-8 ft, though significant portions have yellowed, wilted, and died. Of course, the juliets and sungolds are the only ones that don't seem affected by the wilt. All those affected are heirlooms. Peppers seem ok.

I did a lot of web-searching for answers on whether or not to pull the plants. For Fusarium, a number of the sources indicate that you could leave them until the fruits are ready to harvest; then pull the plant. It seemed to suggest that the fruits of F-diseased plants are still viable. Sadly, I discovered that this is *not* the case. The first few ripened tomatoes were great. But the more the disease took hold of the plants, the quality of the fruits declined, to the point of being near-inedible. (We discovered this last night as we cut up about 12 lbs of tomatoes in preparation for canning. We had to discard at least half of it.) The fruits of each variety seemed to manifest the disease in different ways: some displayed a brown/rotten-looking core that spred progressivly through the fruit from the stem-end; most had lots of white, hard, and fibrous areas where the meaty/fleshy portions would be. In fact, individual fibers--bristly, like horse hairs--could be found throughout the meaty parts of the fruit. Trying to pull them out--which, by the way, was near-impossible--felt like I was deboning a fish! The experience was terrible, crushing. The fruits had looked beautiful on the outside.

I read some threads on gw that recommended certain organic fungicides that combat Fusarium: Actinovate, and Exel LG. I was able to get my hands on some Actinovate (expensive!), but the disease was already too advanced to benefit.

In the last few days, the plants have made a steep decline. Knowing that the fruits are no longer viable, I am ready to pull the plants. *sob*

Crop rotation is not really an option for me, either. And I am passionate about growing heirloom varieties. I am committed to an organic program, so I know my options are limited. I have read some positive things about solarization, which can be done with small-scale home gardens:

http://solar.uckac.edu/garden_landscape_info.htm
http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-0713/

The only hitch with this method is that your garden needs to be bare in the hottest months of the year, so you basically lose an entire planting season.

Anyway, I am eager to hear any other possibilites for combating Fusarium.

Looks like Fusarium to me too.

At one point Craig LeHoullier was doing some experimentation to see what heirlooms might tolerate Fusarium better than others... I fell off the face of the earth before I heard what his results were. (He's probably still working on it, knowing him.) He was a regular on the Growing Tomatoes forum for years, but may have left during the exodus some years back. I'll see whether I can track him down.

One thing he did for his non-experimental heirlooms was to grow his plants in five-gallon buckets -- I think he may have lifted them on inch or so off the ground, but I'm not sure. He ran drip irrigation lines for water, and drove a stake into the ground next to them, anchoring the pot and providing a stake to tie the plant to. He grew scores, if not hundreds, of tomatoes this way every year, and he got decent returns out of it. It's not ideal, but it does work.

Solarization is a control method, not an eradication method, so you'd have to do it once every few years for good control. It may work in yards large enough to divide in half, so that you can solarize half while growing plants in half... I'd stick to containers for small or shaded yards.

Fusarium likes warm soil, so if you grow early determinate varieties, you may be able to get in and out before it really cracks down in the heat of the summer. That kind of leaves you in the lurch for the rest of the season, but it may be a strategy for getting enough tomatoes to can (as opposed to fresh eating). Then grow a few long-season varieties in pots to supply you with slicers for sandwiches and salads.

Good luck.

--Alison

do you know of a big proplem with (Early blight) plants are healthy then after fruit sets early july they get brown spots on leaves turn yellow then brown as they die off starting from botem

Mattpower and Veggiedreams,

I feel your pain. I have a small backyard garden and I have been growing heirlooms for about 7 years. The first two years I had good results, although I dealt with problems of overcrowding such as foliage diseases; I long for those days. By the third year, something really sinister was happening to my tomatoes.

I have good quality soil in raised beds, I start all my own seeds, I mulch all the plants with finely shredded leaves, the plants are caged and well supported, and I water evenly from below. I use organic fertilizers and replenish my beds with excellent compost from our township recycling center that is made up of fall leaves (as well as my own compost in the Fall). In essence, I do everything right.

At first, not all of the plants showed the same symptoms, which made it extremely difficult for me to know what was going on. Some wilted during the day in the high heat, starting with the tips of branches and progressing to the entire plant over time. Those plants would stop growing and then start to yellow and die. Others had single lower branches that turned yellow and wilted (much like yours in the picture above). I'd trim them, but the problem would progress until only the tops of the plants remained. Theses plants would then stop producing fruit and eventually die. Fortunately I was able get some tomatoes before the disease would take over.

I decided to take action, so I sent plant samples to the plant pathology lab at Penn State University. They confirmed a strain of Fusarium wilt supposedly common to Pennsylvania. I don't know how it came to my garden. It also kills my cucumbers, but nothing else. Now, Mike McGrath of "You Bet Your Garden" fame tells me that the university is full of it and that we don't have Fusarium in PA. I respectfully disagree.

Since this discovery, I started growing my tomatoes in large pots. However, here's where it gets really weird: the disease has followed my plants to the pots somehow. Each of the past several years, I have had trouble growing in pots as well. Not all plants are affected, but nonetheless, it has been incredibly frustrating. This year, I sterilized the pots, stakes and cages, and used only store bought, high quality potting soil and compost and used plastic mulch. Alas, I have fared much better this year. Only one plant is showing signs of wilting. However, I've been hit hard with blossom end rot, something I've never dealt with before to this degree. I have two plants loaded with tomatoes and every single one has blossom end rot. They are paste tomatoes, so I know this can be a problem, but I've NEVER seen it on every tomato. My point is that growing in pots can be successful, but getting good results can be tricky.

One heirloom I have grown successfully every year is Kelloggs Breakfast. This is an incredibly powerful tomato plant that seems to withstand Fusarium pretty well...better than the so called super hybrids that are supposedly resistant to the disease (yes, I've experimented widely with these to no avail).

Allison, any suggestion as to how this disease is affecting my potted plants would be welcome!

For what it's worth, I have two plants in the ground in a patch of yard away from my raised beds and they are doing really well. So I know the evil lurks only around my garden beds.

pksinan, I visited an organic tomato greenhouse out in the middle of nowhere in the Sierra foothills this year... it had concrete floors and drip irrigation, going to grow-bags raised off the floor by wooden or plastic crates. The grower is very experienced and has done this for many years with good harvests... and even he gets Fusarium wilt in his concrete and steel greenhouse. He said that it's crept up in the last few years, until this year it was bad enough that when he takes out the plants (around now, probably, is when he does his annual turnover) he said he would sterilize absolutely everything before restarting. And I mean everything, including walls and ceiling.

Fusarium travels with soil or flowing water, so it can creep into all sorts of places. The greenhouse owner said he suspected the employees might have tracked it in with the mud on their shoes, so he's planning to institute a foot bath at the entrance. You don't have to go that far, but do take a look at your gardening practices. Any transfer of dirt to the containers can do it, even dirt under your fingernails or mud on your garden hose. It can get splashed up from the ground by rain, or work its way up from roots the container plants set into the soil through drainage holes. It's insidious.

I have charcoal rot of beans here, and as a result I grow my few beans in containers; I'm always worried about soil splash, or whether I grubbed in the dirt before I pulled a few weeds out of the bean trays (oops). At least the sclerotia for Macrophomina are bigger than Fusarium conidia, which are truly microscopic -- I haven't had much trouble with my beans yet, but I'd be sunk if the problem was Fusarium wilt.

It can be tough, but if you grow a few extras and keep an eye on patterns that may emerge, you can do pretty well despite it. Good luck.

--Alison