Looks like herbicide damage, have you been spraying anything near the plants? Even the slightest breeze can take unseen vapors onto plants and damage them.

I hope that's the case because if not, it could be cucumber mosaic virus.

Herbicide drift.

If your first tomatoes had the same foliage deformation, as you noted, and there was no herbicide drift, and now these are showing the same type foliage, and again there's no herbicide drift, then yes, as catman said and you as well, it could be CMV.

And the herbicide would have to be of the 2, 4-D type b'c any glyphosphate herbicides such as Round UP, usually show white areas on the leaves nearest the stems and oxamyl herbicides cause whitening of the leaf tips.

Actually such shoestring foliage looks more like CMV to me than it does even 2,4-D type foliage.

Carolyn

Yikes... well I thought *maybe* it could have been Roundup/2,4D from afar the first time - but I haven't used any and the area is pretty isolated. But after clearing the first affected/infected plants and letting the garden sit for a week, then I couldn't resist trying something to salvage the season. Looking at pictures of CMV on cucs - I realized that my cucs late last year had it but I thought it was just late season old foliage and cold. So if it is CMV - what are my options? What is the best recommended treatment and how can I prevent future infections? Thanks for everything - hoping other harvests are bountiful!

Sully, I'm linking below to a Google search on CMV of tomatoes but note when you read some of the links that CMV is a very common infection for many crops as well as many weeds serving as hosts.

Being a virus there is no treatment, control measures are discussed in the various links and rely on prevention of insect transmission, destruction of weeds, well, you'll read it.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: CMV infection

Carolyn and all, thank you. I've been reading about CMV and so I've got some hard questions and decisions this season. So I broke down and used some Ortho garden pesticide a few days ago to rid the plants of the aphids, but I guess my questions are - am I done with tomatoes in this garden for the season? for several? The garden is well mulched and mostly weed free, and my location with the azeala bushes and hydrangea within 2ft isn't going to be able to change so I just don't see the garden being bug free. Last, I am pretty sure the disease had to come from last years Cucumbers, it easily could have been transmitted by trowel, cages, or pruners - so will a dormant season in the garden help innoculate the bed/garden area or is it simply bugs in the surronding landscape will overwinter and return to infect season after season? (I will disinfect the tools and cages) Thanks again.

I guess what I'm looking for is what other people would do or have done with this problem in their garden in the past. I changed the first picture to better document this in case future folks are seeing similar symptoms - I see a lot of 2,4D answers but in this case the leaves did not become leathery or discolored.

Oh I forgot something I should mention - last 2 years I had a plant or two show these symptoms when they were young and in the ground (trenched), about 1 foot in height or a little higher. It only happened to the ones near the dryer exhaust, so I suspect that was the culprit. So it's not just the herbicide or CMV that can cause it supposedly. I also grew cukes in the same area, they never showed symptoms and neither did any other tomatoes and they outgrew it as they got bigger, so it wasn't CMV and there were no herbicides.

Sully, at this point I don't know what to say other than see what happens to the plants. You also have the option of contacting the nearest Cooperative Extension and asking for advice at this point.

Catman, I've seen pictures that have been posted of plants near dryer outlets and the foliage just looked dried out as I think one might expect, with brown shrivelled up leaves.

Sully, you suspected CMV in the first place, and I still think it's the leading candidate, but do check with your local Cooperative Extension and explain about what your first set of plants looked like and now these look the same, and see what they have to say. Coop Extensions are often manned by novice Master Gardener folks, many of whom have little practical experience with diagnosing diseases, etc. so you really want to talk to an infectious disease specialist as I see it.

Carolyn

Carolyn - these weren't dried up or brown, they were maybe 20 feet away from a 2nd story exhaust and they had shoestring shape very similar to herbicide drift or CMV. Not sure why.