Speck can be cured and the plants can grow out of it. When I had it I removed all the spotted leaves and sprayed something organic and they rebounded. The worst problems are the viruses. If you get a serious virus you should just give up and start over.

I have four full size tomato plants in containers on my balcony. They were doing fabulously until this week, when two of them started developing brown speckles all over the underside of the leaves - eventually affecting both sides of the leaf. The thing that looks closest based on the pictures on line is bacterial leaf speck, but I am not sure. We have had a TON of rain lately, which is supposed to trigger it. The plants also seem to have a lot of tiny black flies (almost like fruit flies) that have been settling on them, so that might be a factor. Does anyone recognize it from these pictures? And, if you can diagnose it, is there anything I can do? Is it contagious? Should I try to get rid of those plants so that the others don't get infected? Image link:

Jean, definitely not aphids. Fusion, I'm hoping its not spotted wilt virus! I looked up photos and it certainly looks like it! I'm going to take samples to my extension office soon. I didnt take a photo of the entire plant because only small sections are showing symptoms that you can't see unless closely examining.

I honestly try very hard NOT to be overparanoid about things like this. I do not ever use anything in my garden except for homemade compost. I don't even add things to my soil as most gardeners do. I am also the person who uses steam to clean her house instead of chemicals when at all possible. I also figure though that for the times I do need to buy things in the stores, like right now when my garden is being moved and my canned goods are running out, I have little control over what they have done to the plants they grew my food on and they probably did WAY worse than a little copper fungicide. I don't have pets, but I do have a now 3 and 4 year old. Last year when they were 2 and 3 I didn't let them in the garden for the day I sprayed , but after that I let them back in. BUT, my kids also don't munch on leaves (well not of the tomato plants anyway) so I am not sure how I would feel about that. I am not sure what your plan for next year is, but I did my research before deciding to move my garden for other reasons. I was going to do solar sterilization. You will obviously need to do something otherwise you will have the same issue next year that you have this year. I will add a link below to solar sterilization. I haven't tried it, but with my tomatoes dying off early I figured I had enough time to cut my losses cover the garden up and bake the soil if I needed to get it ready for this year. I would be curious if anyone on GW has tried it. Here is a link that might be useful: Soil solarization