I disagree... herbicide damage rarely causes spots on the leaves, and the yellowing tends to be a general overall thing (especially on the growing tips), not mottled. It's always easier to figure out with a picture, but a virus is possible. TMV is, indeed, almost nonexistent outside of labs in the US. Cucumber Mosaic Virus, on the other hand, is out there, and may be more common than you think (many Heavenly Bamboo plants carry it; the resulting red color is considered desirable). There is also Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, which is rampant in many parts of the country. Both CMV and TSWV are vectored by insects; they are the major viruses we usually run into in tomato plants. They can strike individual plants, leaving neighbors alone. If you're dealing with an herbicide, the effects will show up on neighboring plants which are close to each other and sharing the bed, or different species of plants that share the same soil/exposure, like squash or peppers (but not necessarily every kind of vegetable). The plants might pull out of a light exposure once the source of herbicide is removed; the best sign is when they start to grow again. Badly herbicide-damaged or virus-infected plants will stop growing or slow to a crawl, and will never start again. Am I stuck with never using this soil for tomatoes again? No. Any virus you are likely to encounter in tomatoes doesn't persist in the soil. If your soil is contaminated with herbicide (and I can't imagine how you would manage that with Mel's Mix, unless the compost part was badly contaminated) then you will have to get rid of it, but not if the herbicide drifted over from elsewhere. How badly will my harvest suffer? Virus-infected plants will not bear, or will bear misshapen and often bad-tasting fruit. Since you're not likely to get any good fruit out of these plants once the virus is well established, you'll have fewer plants to harvest from. If herbicide-damaged plants recover, they will be set back by at least a few weeks, but the fruit you get after that should be fine. Is moving the plants to a different part of my back yard sufficient, or do I need to destroy them? If it's a virus, you need to pull them. CMV and TSWV are transmitted by insects which can fly, and infected plants can serve as a reservoir for insects to infect your currently healthy plants. (Besides, they won't fruit well, so why keep them?) If it's herbicide damage... well, if the soil isn't the problem, and there's no new drift from elsewhere, then there's no real point to moving them. Either they'll pull out or they won't. How likely is it that all my tomato plants are infected? I have around a dozen plants and hate to think that I need to destroy them all. I've gotten a few virus-infected plants over the years; once I confirm that it's a virus rather than some quirk of weather or genetics, I pull the (usually single) plant and look for the same symptoms on other plants. Out of three years I've had a virus problem, I've had to pull four plants total, and I grow over 15 plants a year. So keep your eyes peeled, and if you're lucky, it might turn out to be just a couple. They're all growing well. Now this is what confuses me. Is it just the normal-looking plants that are growing well? If so, cross your fingers and leave them be. If the shoestring-leaf ferny plants are also growing "well", as in vigorous and putting out lots of new growth, digdirt may be onto something with his herbicide theory. Here's a few pics to help out: Cucumber Mosaic Virus Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus --Alison

I read this post yesterday and suspected Midge-especially since the advice in the book was to cut back the growth which is one of the things you can do for Midge. When it is totally out of control you get no bloom but a milder infestation will have only the characteristic occasional burnt match tips especially on late growth. Midge is at its height in mid to late summer as the number of insects build up with successive generations. I have good success with barrier-if you have no underplantings you put newspaper on the ground around the infested plants and then cover that with mulch-do it after dormancy because the midge is in the ground at that time. You can knock back the number of insects by cutting soft growth and bagging it up-the larva are so tiny you must have a lense to see them and you wont see eggs. I have been doing this for years since I had a major infestation-but I dont have to deal with grass and the bed with the problem has no major interplantings. patricia

I have never used that product but have burned leaves using soaps. The pores in the leaves get covered and water cannot escape, which is how leaves cool themselves, and they cook. Copper can cause problems as well and should be used cautiously. It can absorb into the leaf and cause other minerals to become unavailable. It is tough to stop fungi when conditions are wet, but as things dry out they become easier to control. That is the life of a grower... I have had lots of rust this year and find the best thing is to give them lots of space and air to dry their leaves early in the day and after a rain. Nursery trees are often grown in close proximity to one another and get watered from above so that combined with record setting rain is probably the cause of the rust on your tree. The grower would probably not have had the same problem in the past, or not as early in the season as to be a problem. Your tree will be fine but is probably going to drop most of its leaves soon, which you should bag and throw in the trash. This will actually give you a good opportunity to repot and help the tree recover and grow better than it would if it stayed in a small container for the rest of the season. The new leaves will not be infected because now they are in conditions that do not favor rust.

I have to tell you the truth. When my cucumbers got mosaic virus last year, I just let them keep growing. They can outgrow the disease to a certain extent if they are large enough when it hits. Mine were. Mine kept producing even though they were ugly plants. A couple of vines died, but the others just grew more and took over the empty space on the trellis. The mosaic virus spread slowly from one cucumber plant to another (though an occasional plant never contracted it at all) but never spread to other cucurbits growing just a few feet away. After I'd canned a ton of pickles (about 120 pints, plus 30 or 40 more from fermenting recipes), I finally yanked out the plants, but not until I let the last cucumbers get big and huge and yellow on purpose so I could use them to make mock apple rings (a process that involves fermenting and then canning). The main cucumber variety I grow, always and forever, is County Fair. It has great disease tolerance. I'm not saying it won't catch diseases---just that it outlives them, which is a great quality to have because cucurbits get every disease that comes along. The other pickling cukes that have shown the best disease tolerance in our garden are Arkansas Little Leaf/H-19 Little Leaf and Sumter. Many weeds are disease hotbeds. That's one reason I weed all the time. Cucumber beetles vector all sorts of disease. I like to grab them and squish them to death when I see them. Bon, if you've got row cover, next year grow your cucumbers under it until they begin to bloom. That will keep the cucumber beetles off of them until the plants are large enough to outlast whatever diseases they bring when they come calling. Don't overthink it this year. Plant what you want. It may or may not get the mosaic virus, but even if it does, it might produce anyway. I add compost to my beds every year, so I'll even go back in the next year and plant cucurbits in the exact same bed where I had them the year before. Case in point---last year's cucumber bed/trellis is growing icebox melons and muskmelons this year and they are fine and well and show no signs of any mosaic virus yet. Of course it still could show up. It probably will. The pests that vector it can pop up out of nowhere at any time---now, June, August, whatever. I just don't worry about it. It is just one of the gardening challenges we face. I simply refuse to let things like mosaic virus stop me from growing what I want to grow where I want to grow it. I have found that most things outgrow it, outlast it and outproduce it. I feel like it is more damaging in huge commercial fields where it can spread rapidly over a huge distance.