I'd say you're thinking in the right ways on these, Mark. Those purple spots on Coyote look bad to me, and when you added in the curled top growth I said immediately, "I'd yank it." Bacterial speck tends to be more toward the bottom and black, not purplish... and it can't cause that distortion. Only two things cause new growth like that in tomatoes: herbicide or virus. I'd pull it. The second one is borderline; the real question is where the symptoms are showing up. Virus spots tend to show on newer growth, while bacterial and fungal things often show up more on the lower, older leaves. If you're getting leaves halfway up the plant or higher with that netting effect, while the leaves below are better or unaffected, I'd be betting on TSWV. If you feel daring, leave it in until it starts to stunt, and then you can be sure. The last pic looks like Early Blight -- the broad halo is indeed a classic fungal symptom, and the edge-placement and brown dead area suggest Alternaria. Give the Daconil a try and pick off the affected leaves; mulching and clearing out the lower foliage may help as well. It's always hard to pull plants, but you're doing well at keeping on top of things, looks like. Good luck. --Alison

The bacterium that causes Bacterial Speck with tomatoes is not the same as the one that infects peppers, so no problem there. For next year I suggest you do a few things. First, you can turn over the soil where you have your tomatoes and with a shovel, not with a rototiller, and that buries the bacteria and spores that fall to the ground from infected plants. When buried deeply they can't do damage. If not buried deeply then your plants can get what's called Splashback reinfection from rain or irrigation splashing the spores and bacteria back onto the plant. One thing that helps is to mulch the plants to prevent splashback. All NEW infections are aquired via wind and rain, so as soon as you set the plants out you need to start on a regular vigorous spray schedule. There's no knowing what might hit your plants next year so if it were me I'd start with the anti-fungal Daconil first. If you start seeing any evidence of bacterial foliage infections then add something copper to your spray schedule. But don't mix the two together since that dilutes the number of molecules in the Daconil that attach to the specific receptor sites on the upper leaf surface and prevents attachment of those fungal pathogens. And with dilution not allthosesites will be covered. Is protection total? No, no product is 100% effective, but some of them do help. I can think of very few folks who have NEVER had tomato plants with foliage diseases so what you're experiencing is experienced by millions of backyard tomato growers. As for your seed sources, I'm a long time Life Time member of SSE and I happen to think that the prices asked for in the Public catalog are way too high. Just my opinion. And personally I gave up on Burpee many many years ago for several reasons. There are some terrific seed sites, many of them family owned, that offer LOTS of varieties for a more decent price, again, IMO. and in these economic times I think they deserve our support b'c it's they, who help preserve varieties, by offering them. And there are many threads here at GW whiich list what some of those sites are. I'll mention just a few where I know the owners well and trust what they do: Sandhill Presrvation Tomato Growers Supply ( also hybrids) Gleckler Seedmen Victory Seeds Heritage Seeds in CA Heirloom Seeds in PA Tania at her website sells seeds for about 600 varieties and also has a superb website with pages for over 3,000 varieties, with comments from others, pictures and seed sources for the varieties where known, and I'll link to it below if you don't know about it. It looks like her site is down right now but hopefully that's temporary associated with weather in British Columbia Casey's Heirloom tomatoes of Airdrie, Canada Well those are a few and no doubt I've left off some sites, but the above are ones that I sent seeds for new varieties for trial each year, with few exceptions, so I do know them well and trust all of those sites and there are some sites I cannot suggest at all. Carolyn

It looks like septoria, or maybe early blight. The only way to be sure is to have it tested if you have a local agricultural extension office. I don't think septoria or EB will attack the fruit, but bacterial speck will. In the past has the fruit been affected? Septoria and EB are both able to overwinter so if you are using the same pots each year, irrigation system, re-using soil, not sterilizing garden tools, there could be a chance this is why you have recurrent problems. Or if you purchase transplants a large number of them from big box stores carry disease. Septoria also lives on certain yard weeds so it is possible it has another host plant in your yard. I have had luck with removing diseased leaves and alternating spraying with copper, daconil, and serenade. The schedule for all of them is basically once per week or more often if it has rained. I personally would not spray copper or daconil more than twice per week even if there has been a lot of rain because I don't want it building up in the soil and I have had copper burn leaves esp if sprayed before hot sunny weather.

In your zone (which is also my zone), Mother's Day should normally be more than fine for planting out. But both last year and this year, we had a very wet, cool May. Last year some of my plants also got speck very early, during May. Replacement plants, however, that were very small and young when they went into the ground, caught up to the older plants easily after a few weeks and went on to produce just as much. Those didn't go in until after the first week of June. Of course, we also had warm weather until late into fall, with a killing frost not hitting until November. This year, I'm deliberately planting late. I have some tomatoes planted out, but not all yet. The Drowns who run Sandhill Preservation in zone 5 IA say they now start their tomatoes in mid-May and put them out in mid-June (!!!) because they see less disease, and they still get plenty of tomatoes. I'm a little too impatient to get tomatoes to wait quite that long, and we're a bit warmer here, but around the Philadelphia area, older gardeners still say Memorial Day is when you plant out tomatoes. The race to boast the earliest tomatoes may not be worth it here (well, not yet), since we're still not racing extreme heat and pests the way more southern gardeners are, and we do have a rather long growing season, unlike more northern gardeners. Anyway, the short version is: I don't think you need to wait longer, but if you do, you'll have to spray your plants frequently during May if we get a lot of rain again. Or you can wait and set them out later. But if you go that route, prepared to be constantly tortured as others post beautiful photos of lush tomato plants they put in the ground early, LOL.