that happened to me this year too, after a week f ran in the cold.
It was stinky stuff.
My plants were blacker and more slimy looking, but the fruits loked the exact same as yours.

Too much of a newb to help identify, but I do sympa/empthize.

What a heartbreaker. I don't know what it was, but the experts will soon chime in, hopefully.

Hey Dr. Carolyn!! Is this late blight or worse?

Another bit of background I forgot:

The plants looked okay on a Thursday when a helper found lots of hornworms. I think she would have noticed any major problems. The plants were likely wet while she was working since it had rained most of the day on every day since Monday with few breaks. The rain continued through the weekend. On Sunday the plants had most leaves dark and dead or dying. Fine on Thursday, mostly dead on Sunday, quite a shock to us. My greenies at home had been taken out several days before and yet they too went bad while in a dry house.

My tongue and lung problems may not have been related to the garden clean up....although I think they were. I have allergies to molds but never had the numb/tingly tongue symptoms before. I took antihistamines for 2 days and all symptoms quickly went away.

The only positive was that these tomatoes were intended for a food pantry, and at the time the pantry was getting LOTS of tomatos from other gardeners. We were still able to supply them with other produce from the garden that they needed.

The time between the onset of this and the total devastation is so short that I have to wonder about other possibilities than disease. Granted the weather you describe is quite condusive to fungal, molds, and mildew problems but from essentially healthy to crop wipe-out in 3-4 days???, no way. And such wide-spread devastation? One would almost suspect some sort of acid rain!

Is there any possibility of local weed or chemical spraying or chemical drift from anywhere near by? Neighbors, city/county spray program, industry? That might also explain your other symptoms.

If not then I would have to suspect that some disease process, most likely the fungus of late blight from your pics, was already at work - it takes time for the spores to multiply to that extent - but going unnoticed for some reason and the days of rain and perhaps wind dispersed the spores quickly and over a large area.

I'm sorry to see your loss. I know how crushing that can be.

Dave

I'm pretty sure now I had late blight.
I think you did too.

I read in a source I can no longer find, it can wipe out
crops in days. Took it about a week for mine, but only because my plants were huge.

http://plant-disease.ippc.orst.edu/disease.cfm?RecordID=1084

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Digdirt, thanks for the ideas.

I doubt we had chemical drift, our garden is part of a large nature center and the area around it is lucky to even see a mower once in awhile. I can't think of anywhere nearby that would have been sprayed. Also, other plants such as peppers, watermelon, pumpkins, corn, and herbs were not affected. Would tomatoes be especially vulnerable to sprays?

I carefully watched the potatoes and peppers expecting they might be suseptable to the same disease, or whatever it was. Only 1 pepper plant right next to the tomatoes looked diseased. I removed it. Three other closeby peppers stayed fine.

The acid rain idea is interesting. I haven't heard of problems in the area, though. Would acid rain affect tomatoes quicker than other crops? We don't have any large industries nearby....but I guess stuff can travel from far away.

I never had trouble in my home garden over the years and do not watch for early signs of fungal disease. Maybe they were present at the nature center garden and just not noticed. And then the constant wetness provided ideal conditions for rampant growth. ??? I wish I had been the one who worked there on Thursday. The report of healthy plants that day came from a very new gardener. Maybe there were signs she didn't pick up on.

elskunkito, late blight is my guess, too. Sorry to hear you lost your plants. Mine, too, were a smelly mess. I had to get rid of ours quick since the garden is used by school visitors. Didn't want to gross out the students! The things I read and photos I see leave me thinking that the various foliage diseases look very similar. I'm wondering what distinctive diagnostic things the experts see that I'm missing.

Did you grow potatoes nearby? In the past couple of years, did you grow potatoes in the same spot as the tomatoes are growing now? If so, did you leave any potatoes in the ground or leave any waste seed potato culls piled somewhere or thrown into your compost pile? Those are sources of late blight over-wintering in the past.

Of late there has been some interaction of certain late blight strains that has resulted in resistant strains that can persist over long periods in the soil, atypical to what was previously characteristics of late blight. Hopefully you are not being attacked by one of these new strains with long-lived spores that has blown into your garden.

As to ID-ing late blight on tomatoes ...

Late blight generally first appears on tomato leaves as pale green, watersoaked spots often starting at leaf tips or leaf edges.

Circular or irregular shaped lesions surrounded by a yellowish-green margin usually merges with the healthy part of the leaf tissue at first. Then, the lesions rapidly enlarge and turn dark brown or purplish black. When high humidity persists, a white cottony, moldy looking growth will appear on the bottoms of the leaves and at the edges of the lesions. Once the fungus appears on the stems as brown or black lesions, the vines will die rather rapidly. So the rapid demise of your vines during extended wet weather is not outside the norm for this disorder ... if in fact it is late blight.

Late blight can also affect green fruit on the vines showing up as leathery, brown, firm lesions on the sides and upper portion of the tomato. In wet weather, a white mildew kind of mold will appear on the fruit and a secondary soft rot bacterial infection may follow resulting in the entire fruit turning to slimy rot.

Several years ago during a rainy summer, I had a very similar experience with 80 plants the middle of August. Same sudden destruction of previously healthy plants, black patches on stems, shriveled, black moldy leaves, and then, infected fruit. At first I thought it was late blight, too, but after posting the problem and reading Carolyn's comments, it was more likely a disease called Gray Mold. A few stricken plants put out new growth in September, but it was too late in the year and most plants had died.

It may have been an airborn infection because a large tomato garden two blocks away was not affected. I cleared out all vegetation in September and did not plant tomatoes in the same rows the following year. The good news is that the affected garden area did not show any disease problems two years later when I started planting tomatoes there again. Of course, summers have been drier since then, too.

I'm sorry you experienced it and hope you never do again.

Sara Jane

I am sure that you had late blight. The images that you show are conclusive. In the next season if you have wet weather and cool temperatures the disease will be return. If you do not change the soil, chemicals are the solution. First prevent like cooper or mancozeb, and when de conditions will be favourable and if you have symptoms, metalaxil or cimoxanil are the solution.

good luck
excuse me for the bad english

regards form Uruguay,

Mats