I am new to gardening and started some tomatoes from seeds about a month ago. Things grew so great and then a few days ago I started seeing tiny brown spots on the larger under leaves. I am worried that they might already have a bad fungus or something. They are organic heirloom plants and this happened the day before I started taking them outdoors to harden them off. they have been growing under some grow lights- full spectrum. I water around the base with a plant sprayer/mist. they have gotten 14 hrs of light since they emerged and a little fish/kelp mixture a few times. Can I just pinch off the spotted leaves prior to planting in the ground or is this a really bad sign that they will get a blight or fungal disease later on? thanks for any and all responses! :)

Hi guys, thanks for the "not-blight" info, I will refrain from ripping it out and burning it. One note, it's possible that it had snails before I bought it, but I didn't notice spots when I bought it, then it sat in my house for a week, with me checking on it every day (no snails or bugs) and i started to notice those spots developing. They started out darker green, and then eventually became the sunken, dried, brown spots that you see in the photos. Does that help any?

Back of leaf picture here This post was edited by ash1970 on Fri, Jun 6, 14 at 15:40

From the research I've just been doing on my early blight, which is what I see on yours (not the dreaded late blight), you need to get ALL of the affected leaves off there, because the spores are easily transferred from leaf to leaf, and yes, continue spraying. Serenade is an organic spray that's often recommended, and Daconil is also very popular (I don't know if it's organic though). And when you pluck off all those leaves (very carefully, so as not to spread the spores even more), you should bag them up very carefully and tightly, or burn them. Don't compost them, because you'll just be incubating the spores into your compost, which will cause further trouble. Good luck! We're in NJ and were nailed by the same rainy weather you probably had, so it's been quite the uphill battle for us too.