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Vegetable Gardening

Issue with Cherokee Purple Tomato - Should I remove plant?

6 years ago

I noticed this leaf damage this morning. See pictures. This is occurring on the upper new growth of the tomato. Tomato is Cherokee Purple -Is this a tomato disease of some kind? Any clue on what this is and what to do? Do I need to remove plant if it is a disease? We have had really high temps last several days but I do not see this on other plants so suspect some kind of disease.

Featured Answer

digdirt2

6 years ago

Look at it this way - even if it was a disease of some kind that wouldn't mean you would need to pull the plant. All the common diseases are air borne fungus spores or bacteria so the odds are if one plant has it so do the others already. So you do what you need to control and treat the disease once you know which one it is.

Like Chris my first thought was nitrogen burn since it is just the tips and edges of a few new leaves. And that is still possible even if you haven't fed them. But when it is such a small amount of damage and the rest of the plant looks perfectly healthy then 9 times out of 10 it is just environmental damage such as you discovered.

Next most likely cause when we see something like this is a pest issue. Only when those issues have been ruled out do we need to start thinking about diseases.

Dave

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Comments (9)

Chris (6a NY)
6 years ago
How much fertilizer have you been using?
babushka_cat
Original Author
6 years ago
None, have not fertilized anything yet. This is just in the soil as delivered, just watering. This is 1 of 3 tomato plants in the same raised bed but the only one showing these symptoms.
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I haven't fertilized yet but plan on doing so this week. I'm a vegan/organic grower so I just plan on just adding whatever basic mix I can find. The compost I used may have been lacking in a nutrient or two. I have added a small amount of compost around the base last week and it's been watered with that twice. I will probably be adding more soon after some fertilizer. The growth on the plant has severely slowed down and it's no longer having flowers open up. It's just holding onto the 15 or so big tomatoes on the plant and sitting there. Some of my melon plants are doing the same thing, which leads me to believe I need to add more nutrients to the soil. Thanks!
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You aren't doing anything wrong and it isn't a disease. Your pics are small and I can't enlarge them at all but IMO it is most likely some sort of pest damage that has scarred over combined with catfacing. Birds will peck them, squirrels take bites out and leave the rest, so do turtles if they can reach them. Then there are tomato worms, army worms, etc. that can munch on the outside but may not enter the fruit. Insect damage, poor pollination, and environmental factors all cause catfacing, the puckering, scarring, and deformation of tomatoes. Sometimes this scarring extends deep into the fruit cavity, sometimes not. The most common cause of catfacing is exposure to temperatures below 50 degrees during flowering and fruit set but others factors can contribute too and some varieties are a bit more prone to it than others. Just Google 'catfacing tomatoes' for lots of photos and details on it. Dave
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Hmmm...both of those opinions are at odds with what I have found in the past. HOWEVER, in the past, I either let all plants do their thing (with a small amount of fiddling), or did the 1-stem thing with more fiddling on all plants last year (and did get fewer and considerably larger fruits)...so, the effects that I saw may have been caused by weather conditions, etc. For my multiple plants, I will experiment...will pluck fruits from some, leave all fruits on others, see what happens, and report back in a few months. Would still like to hear other opinions if anyone else has any thoughts!
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Chris (6a NY)
6 years ago
Well that rules over-fertilizing out lol.
babushka_cat
Original Author
6 years ago
In looking on line worried this could be bacterial canker. Thinking I should pull the plan ASAP before it infects the rest of the garden. Do others agree?

https://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/yard-garden/vegetables/bacterial-canker-tomatoes/index.html
Chris (6a NY)
6 years ago
Idk about that. Do you see the actual cankers on the stem? That doesn't look like a disease to me. Can you send a picture of the whole plant?
babushka_cat
Original Author
6 years ago
Would be great news if it is not a disease. In looking at leaves closer there is a red/orange/rust edge not yellow. picture of whole plant below. I have not noticed cankers on stem, will check again. other than these areas the plant looks good to me. I have to get better stakes in this weekend pronto, the tom's are taking off and bamboo is not going to cut it.
babushka_cat
Original Author
6 years ago
Maybe it is this, see below. I do not have any mulch down, was going to get stakes and rice straw to mulch with this weekend.

Environmental Problems

Tomato plants need consistent care in order to thrive. Stress from drought often appears first as browning, drying leaf margins before spreading farther into the plant's tissue. Fertilizer burn may cause similar symptoms due to contact damage to tender roots in the soil. Both conditions can be remedied by increasing the frequency of watering, as well as providing deeper irrigation -- long, deep drinks encourage tomato roots to reach deeper into the soil, away from shallow, concentrated fertilizer treatments.

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/tomato-plant-turning-brown-around-edges-leaves-55338.html
Yao Lin (bay area, USDA zone 9b)
6 years ago
I live in the bay area and the temperature was very high for the past week. I have 9 tomato plants, including 5 Cherokee Purple. All of them got into the leaf issue mentioned above from this heat wave. The strong and healthy plants have issues with, maybe 10 leafs out of 500 leafs. So I am not worrying about them, as they seem to be fruiting normally. But the weaker plants did get hit harder. The most extreme one, a Sun Sugar, lost maybe 40+ leafs out of 60-70 total. I am not sure if it would survive.

I have grown tomato for 3 years and we had even worse heat waves. But I don't remember the past heat waves had this kind of damage.
babushka_cat thanked Yao Lin (bay area, USDA zone 9b)

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