Hi ladies! Y'all know that it is very distressing for me to hear that your tomto plants are misbehaving. How dare they give you trouble so early in the season. Ilene, are the whitish areas on the leaves only along the edges or scattered all over the leaves? And, with the yellowing on the leaves, is it ONLY yellowing or do you see any concentric circles in black or brown shades? G.M., I think I already responded to your questions on the other thread. Yellowing leaves are one of the most common tomato problems you will see mentioned on gardening websites. There is a reason for this. Yellow leaves are just the way that tomato plants tell you they are feeling stressed. You know how we wake up with a headache or stiff muscles or whatever? Well, tomato plants wake up and have yellow leaves. Our aches and pains are a reflection of what we have been doing to/with our bodies and their yellow leaves are a reflection of what they are going through too. The tomato plants' stress could be from one of many possible causes. Here's just a few: --too much water, esp. when plants' growth seems stalled --soil is too cool, esp. when plants' growth seems stalled --air temps are too cool, esp. when plants' growth seems stalled --any combination of the first three items listed --too much fertilizer, too often --too hot or too dry, when accompanied by leaves wilting --too much shade and not enough direct sunlight OR --too much sun "all of a sudden" after a string of cloudy days --plants have been moved from a shadier or more sheltered position, like from inside the house or on the porch, to a more exposed, sunnier position without being hardened off again Then, getting into more serious possibilities: --spider mite damage, if weather is 90 degrees or hotter and you see tiny webbing on the leaves accompanied by little red 'dots' on backs of leaves (the dots are the spider mites) --foliage disease, esp. when accompanied by brown or black concentric circles or spotting on the leaves. Could be early blight, for example, or bacterial speck. (I think it is too early for early blight and I don't usually see bacterial speck until late May either.) --systemic diseases, but there will usually be other symptoms as well, such as leaf curling and distortion or sudden wilting of plant --transplant shock if yellowing develops first week or two after plants are put into the ground --nematode damage to roots if you are gardening in EXTREMELY sandy soil Honestly, though, as I was running through the list of most likely possibilities and typing them, I was thinking to myself that most tomato plants will show some yellowing on the leaves early in the season, and it is usually just because the weather is a little cool, it is a little windy, and the soil tends to be a little wetter than they like it. I think tomatoes are happiest with the kind of weather we have from May through about the end of June, weather a little warmer than we're having now, a little less wind and a lot more heat/warmth. If the leaf yellowing is on lower leaves and does not progress up the plant, that is just early season 'less than ideal condition' type stress. If the leaf yellowing begin to move upward leaf by leaf and stem by stem, my 'early blight' alarm bells start ringing. If the yellow leaves are a symptom of too much fertilizer, your should be having bright green vigorous topgrowth while the bottom leaves are yellowing. The white leaf margins are probably just the tiniest bit of sunburn or windburn on the leaves. If new leaves have those edgesalmost as soon as they open up, though, then I would be a little more concerned. If the leaf edges have the tiniest of little brown margins and it is present all along as you are raising the seedlings (and generally is present before they are ever exposed to outdoor conditions), that is a common problem nicknamed CRUD by people on the tomato forum. It tends to go away as the plants grow and it does not seem to indicate a systemic problem, although some experts believe it may be a very mild and aberrrant type of early blight. And, girls, just for fun I am giving you the tomato problem solver link to my favorite website. (NOT because I want you to go there instead of asking me questions, but just thought you might like to see it!) I find answers here at this website when all else fails. I like to be able to look at the pictures and compare the problem I am seeing to what they show. It is an amazing website. Having grown up in Texas, so very, very much of what I learned about gardening was through Texas A&M University and the agriculture extension service they administer, so I am in my own 'comfort zone' when I use their website. Having early tomatoes is important to me (I am so impatient!), so I try to have ripe fruit by late April/early May. Some years it works and some years it doesn't. The two plants with almost-ripe tomatoes are Better Bush. I buy two plants every year as soon as Home Depot or Lowe's get them in, which tends to be around Valentine's Day in the D-FW metro area, which is where I buy them. They are usually in 5" or 6" round pots and cost $2.95 or $3.95 each. When I get them, the plant's main stems are usually about the size of your little finger and the plants are about 8" to 10" tall. I put them in 3-gallon pots as soon as I buy them, feed them some liquid seaweed and set them on the floor right beside my seed-starting shelf. On warm days I carry them outside into the sun for a few hours. On cold nights I bring them inside. They usually bloom sometime in early-to-mid-March. I usually get the first tomatoes off these plants in mid-April. They are actually a little late this year and I think it is because of all the cold weather. Judging from the size of the plants when I purchase them, they must have been started from seeds in late November or cuttings in mid- to late-December. I buy the earliest plants available for early tomatoes because I am too busy with the holiday season to start seed that early myself, and I know I will really, really be craving a home-grown tomato in February or March. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: TAMU Tomato Problem Solver

Usually overwatering will manifest in yellowing leaves first, then it's possible that they could turn brown. Your plants are pretty close together but I don't think spacing is the cause. LOL, I've had tomato jungles before :). One other thing I wanted to mention is that, in my opinion, your stakes are way too short. Since you have limited space in the garden, UP is the way to go with your maters. 6ft stakes with 1 to 1 1/2ft below soil level would be good, and lots of string or twine to keep them on the stakes :). I didn't see any browning of the foliage on your pics. Can you post close-ups of the leaves that are affected? Kristi

I posted this in the Container forum as well, and someone else did suggest that they are probably getting too much water. The buckets have black plastic over them, and I occasionally mist the top because I wasn't sure if the yellow dying leaves were because of too little water. They also suggested that the 70/20/10 mixture I got from GlobalBuckets is not suited well for the tomatoes because it will hold too much moisture, but that my 3,2,1 mix (Raybo's I believe) should be fine. I wonder if I should just pull the plants in the containers with the globalbucket mixture and redo the soil using the 3,2,1?

Gumby ct: these tomatoes are in full sun from sunrise to approx. 5 p.m. in the evening, and thank you for posting the pictures in your comment so they are easier to access. Spiced ham: my garden is kept away a safe distance from where I fertilize the grass/ spray weed killers and sprays and there are also plants next to and in front of the tomatoes so weed-n-feed and weed sprays are very unlikely to even come close to the plants, but thank you very much for your suggestion of cucumber mosaic virus or the herbicide damage.