You may have to do a little detective work. Yellowing leaves can be caused by several things. A few culprits: Soil Staying too wet: (as the temp. cool down sometimes they stay wetter down where the roots are because their growth rates slow down so they drink less. Less water is also lost from the soil due to evaporation). Bugs: Spider mites can cause yellowing: You will usually see litlle yellow/brownich spots on the top of the leaves. On the bottom of the leaf you may see little red or brown dots (sometimes you can see them at all though) Some types make webs in the crevices of the viens ounderneath the leaves. They will suck the juices out of the leaves and cause them to yellow and eventually fall off. Other sucking type of insects will do the same thing-causing yellowing.. Nitrogen/Fertilizer deficiency: can cause yellowing of leaves. Other: Sometimes Brugs tend to have older leaves turn yellow and drop in times when less fert. is available to the plant- and quickly replaces them with new green leaves. Epsom salt: You could try using this as well. It does wonders. In the winter, if you cant find it in the nursery/garden center you can still get it in the pharmacy section at walmart etc. Look around where they keep peroxide, alcohol etc. It is often cheaper in the pharmacy sections than at the nursery anyway :) Good luck, Your plant is beautiful anyways. ~SJN

Thanks for the input. I didn't pull the plants (except for one). i sent the sample in and found out it had fusarium wilt. Coop Ext suggested pulling as it was too far gone.

It's early blight. Remove those leaves, bag them up and dispose away from your garden. I take a plastic grocery bag and make a daily tour around my tomato plants doing just that. Wash you cutting device in a bit of bleach when your done (if you don't pinch off with your fingers). Removing the leaves will slow down the contamination - you should still get a harvest of fruit. (I don't use any chemicals on my plants so I can't advise you on what to spray them with).

Susan - Tiffany is pointing you in the right direction with her comments pertaining to root health. You simply can't hope for a healthy plant unless you can provide an environment conducive to a healthy root system; and even if you could make every other cultural factor that influences your plant perfect, it wouldn't make up for or counteract the limitations imposed by a sick roots. Using rocks as a drainage layer can be counter-productive or it can be helpful, depending on what's going on in the bottom of the pot. Used as a drainage layer, they are almost certainly counter-productive. Used as ballast, they can range from somewhat helpful to very helpful, depending on how they are situated in the pot. I'll try to illustrate with a little science. In the picture above, PWT means perched water table. Perched water is water the soil holds so tightly, it won't drain from the pot by the force of gravity alone. Most commercially prepared soils hold from 3-6" of perched water, meaning that if you water fully, until water is exiting the drain hole, after the pot stops draining, the bottom of the pot is fully saturated with water. Since water and nutrient uptake is energy driven and requires oxygen, you can easily imagine what effect the lack of oxygen has on root function. If you add a "drainage layer" water simply perches in the soil above the drainage layer (see the middle picture). Obviously, that's worse than the first picture because there is considerably less 'healthy' soil for the roots to use in the middle pic than in the first pic. Using ballast correctly reduces the amount of soil that the PWT can occupy. There is less soggy soil, so less excess water in the picture with ballast than in either picture, so even more ballast would be helpful. The problem is, the ballast doesn't fix the soil that causes the excess water to be retained. It just uses physics to reduce the amount of excess water the soil CAN hold. Are you still with me? What we CAN do, if you're up for it, is put together a strategy that will help you rid your planting of SOME of the limitations causing the problems that are related to water retention. The links that Tiffany left are good primers and can provide something of a framework of knowledge that can be expanded upon. With a little effort, you can very quickly learn to avoid all the most common pitfalls that bring people here, looking for help. I don't want to assume anything, so I'll keep an eye out for a reply and what you think of what I said. Thanks for the referral (thread you linked to), Tiff. ;-) I DO notice when you do that, and want you to know I appreciate it. Al