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Growing Tomatoes

My first Tomato growing - strange spots on leaves (pictures!)...

16 years ago

Hey all. This is my first attempt at growing anything other than herbs, and I have run into my first spot of confusion. I planted 3 cherry tomato (Sweet 100 F1) and 1 Roma tomato (VF) plants on May 19, and as of now all 3 cherries have dry brown spots on their oldest leaves. They feel like dead leaves, all crackley. The Roma looks fine. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:

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I thought since the Roma is VF and the Sweet 100 is not that some sort of fungal wilt disease would be the culprit, but this pattern of spotting doesn't look like the pictures of those diseases I have seen.

If anyone could give me some direction here I'd be greatly appreciative. What's wrong? Should I pull these up?

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Comments (7)

j_dubyak
Original Author
16 years ago
Apologies if this is the wrong forum but I'm not certain if this is a disease or not, so I wasn't sure where to put it.
mitch_in_the_garden
16 years ago
Looks like bacterial leaf spot. Could even be TMV (tomato mosaic virus). But I'm no expert and it's so hard to tell sometimes. Are the leaves from the bottom or the top of the plant? What does the rest of the plant look like? Other adjacent varieties similarly affected?
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I don't know what the brown spots are, it may just be cell death from transplanting. Your plant looks healthy to me. In California we don't need to remove the "suckers" from our tomatoes. It gets so hot here most people want as much foliage as possible so that the plants shade the fruit and they don't get sunscald. I would not pick off anything that looks like it could be a flower. Renee
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nanahanna
16 years ago
Looks like tomato spotted wilt to me. Do a google search and you will find pictures. I'd post a url here but we are not supposed to for some reason.

Nanahanna
j_dubyak
Original Author
16 years ago
OK after looking up pictures of all your suggestions, it looks almost certain that my problem is bacterial leaf spot.

My strategy then is going to be pulling up the infected plants before it spreads to my roma or pepper plants. If I were to plant new (hopefully disease free) seedlings in the same spots, would my liklihood of reinfection be 100%? I've read something about treatment of copper fungicides to limit the danger...
mitch_in_the_garden
16 years ago
You might have difficulty finding starts this late. I'd suggest trying a different variety that has some resistance. While few tomatoes have any resistance to most leaf diseases, some tolerate the conditions of specific disease pressure better than others. I would top dress the rest of your plants with a good layer of compost and maybe even some straw mulch on top of that. You can also prune within reason any affected leaves, disposing of them away from the garden.
User
16 years ago
I just went to Ricky's Garden Center today (Union Square in Boston) and they have the standard six packs of tomatoes still along with some individual heirlooms and larger standard ones potted up if you want to replace the ones you're pulling up.
j_dubyak
Original Author
16 years ago
Yeah I'm in Canada so it's not late in the growing season for us. ;)

This might actually be a blessing in diguise since when I went to get more seedlings I decided to branch out, variety-wise. So now I've added another tomato growing location and am experimenting with Sweet 100, Sweet Million, Ultra Girl and Better Boy. I know they may seem like a bunch of boring old hybrids to you tomato veterans but it's plenty of adventure for a novice like me.

Thanks for the help folks and I'll be sure to keep you posted on my progress (threat or promise??). Love this forum.

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