Can You Identify the Cause of This Problem? *pics*

[rnewste]

I would appreciate some help with a problem that has recently developed on 4 of my tomato plants. In sections of these plants (mainly on the North or interior) the leaves just go limp, and a few days later, crumble in your fingers.

There are no bugs or spots on the leaves, and they don't turn yellow. It looks like they "turn off" the moisture and wither. Here are a few pictures:







They are getting plenty of moisture (perhaps too much?). This condition is working its way up these 4 plants at the rate of about an inch a day. The tomatoes and their stems on the other hand, keep growing just fine.

thanks,

Ray

[dice]

I don't know what that is, but it looks like a perfect example
of what Carolyn is always saying about tomato plants having
genetic "tolerance for" rather than "resistance to" diseases.
It is as if the plant is infected by whatever disease causes
that wilt, but rather than being killed by it, it just keeps
outgrowing it.

[PNW_D]

Ray,

these wouldn't be blacks would they - I've had this happen to my plants in past years - as you say - no yellowing - just crispy die-back ....

Can't help with the cause though

[rnewste]

D.

It is happening on my Berkeley Tie Dye, Paul Robeson, 1884 Purple, and Cherokee Purple. Not happening at all with Earl's Faux, as an example.

If you carefully look at the center picture at the 3 o'clock area, you can see a stem that has shrunk in diameter significantly, and turned brown. I am growing concerned that whatever it is, it may spread to my other plants.

Ray

[rnewste]

I have done an "autopsy" on the affected 8 ft. tall Cherokee Purple, and see no nodules, or insects, nor anything else that would appear to be root related. Really a mystery........




Ray

[carolyn137]

I don't consider what you show typical wilting at all and since you're growing in containers it wouldn't be likely that the plants would have any systemic diseases such as Fusarium or Verticillium or Nematodes or even Alternaria Stem Canker which is found mainly in CA.

I see no lesions on the leaves nor on the stems nor on the fruit.

An outside possibility is Bacterial wilt which doesn't have to be soil borne which you can check for by cutting a stem from an area that has symptoms and putting that fresh cut stem in a glass of water and looking for a milky substance to come out.

Have you sliced through the stems from an infected area to see if there's any damage to the interior?

Other than the possibility of disease I do tend to suspect that it might be a water problem, as in too much, but you'd know best about that I would imagine.

[dice]

That last picture looks like something simply gnawed
on the stem. (There are no obvious signs of infection.
Instead of displaying some kind of rot, the edges of the
wound on the stem just look green and dried up, as if
the outer skin had been physically peeled back from the inner
woody part of the stem.)

A mouse? A bird? Some sort of beaver beetle interrupted in
its work?

[rnewste]

dice,

No insects or anything else. I just took a knife and cut the stem to see what it looked like inside. From what I can tell, - - perfect!. Yet I have dozens of branches dying now. The entire 1884 Purple plant is history. Paul Robeson seems to be next. Yet my Carmello is growing next door beautifully. I just don't comprehend what is going on....

Ray

[rsg2001]

These are exactly the same symptoms that I've gotten the last few years on Black Cherry. It usually struck at the time that the plants were peaking in production and loaded. It will kill the plant over the course of a few weeks but leave the fruit un-affected. Since I tend to grow Black Cherry in self-watering pots, I discarded all the soil mix, sanitized the container and used fresh mix. I also planted a couple of them in my in-the-ground-garden, thinking perhaps they were getting too much water in the self-watering pot. However, they all got the same symptoms. I thought perhaps it was a genetic issue combined with my growing conditions - only about 6 hours of sun. It's happened in successive years, using different seed packs. I never posted the pictures, but these look exactly what happened to that variety. I saw it in AGG the two years I grew it, but no other with a pattern like it.

[dice]

The root system on the Cherokee Purple that you pulled looked
normal, but with no symptoms up above other than the
die-back, it still seems like a root problem, like the roots
are simply not supplying enough water for whatever reason.

You could do a water test: remove the automated watering
system on one container that has the beginnings of symptoms
(on both plants preferably), and remove the black plastic mulch
so that it can dry faster. Prune off the branches with dead or
dieing leaves. Monitor it with the moisture meter and water
by hand when it gets down into the dry range.

If those plants recover, you have your answer (too wet, and
the threshold of when they are too wet, in a soil with plenty
of air space, varies with cultivar). If they do not recover, then
it remains a mystery.

Another test: take a healthy branch from a plant with
the symptoms, cut off the top foot of it, drop it in a jar
of water, trim off any flower clusters, put it in a spot that
gets bright indirect light (not dark and shady, but not
direct sun either), and see if it grows roots (this test
takes a few weeks, but you still might need the information
by the time you can draw a conclusion from it). If the cutting
just dies without growing roots, then it could be some invisible
systemic disease.

[rnewste]

dice,

Last weekend I took suckers off 16 of my "A List" plants and have been rooting them in a hormone solution. All developed nice roots, and have transferred them into 4" pots. All appear healthy and green. No wilting.

I took your suggestion and have shut off the AWS to 3 of the 'Tainers most affected. Will monitor moisture and water these manually.

Here is a picture of my Paul Robeson. Lots of fruit ripening and the upper 3 ft. of the plant looks healthy, but you can see the bottom leaves and their branches have been wiped out, and it is progressing upward at about 1 inch per day:



Here is a close-up and I notice 2 things. Many of the leaves have turned themselves upside down, in addition, they have a high degree of leaf roll (or curl):



I recall other posts where folks had leaf roll, as well as leaves that went "inverted". Does this give you any clues?

Within 6 ft. is my Big Beef, and that one is cranking along!



...the mystery continues....

Ray

[dice]

[extreme leaf curl]

I saw that on many cultivars when it was cool and
wet this spring and early summer. It was most severe
on plants in the in-ground bed that had the most clay
in the soil compared to how much organic matter was
there (highest thermal mass, least large pore air space).

The self-watering containers had very little of it, maybe
three leaves out of 7 plants, and it went away once the
weather warmed up.

While my plants had the leaf curl, what I did not see was
leaf mortality like you are seeing. Some plants in the
mostly-clay bed were small and stunted, and a couple were
twisted up as if they had a mild case of herbicide drift, but
the leaves that curled up did not die.

(Right now that bed has 5 plants doing well, 3 looking small
but more-or-less healthy, and 2 looking stunted and still with
a lot of leaf curl, although one of those has set a fruit even
in that condition. The two that looked really twisted, as if
from some toxin or virus, I pulled up and tossed. They still had
tiny root systems that would fit in a coffee cup 6 weeks after
plant out. They were not the same cultivar.)

Leaf curl is *usually* a symptom of environmental stess, in my
case this year cold, water-saturated soil that is a bit lacking
in air space when it is that wet. Leaf curl is associated with
some mineral deficiencies, too, but they are generally
deficiencies of nutrients that Tomato-Tone has covered.

It seems to me that for some reason the roots on your
afflicted plants feel that something is wrong with the
soil. But your containers should be fairly consistent as far
as air space in the container mix goes, and what else those
plants might be finding fault with is not obvious to me.

[cdg]

Hello rnewste and others,
I have no help solving your problem but do have some related info that MIGHT give a clue. I have had the same problem for 2 years with Paul Robeson ,have considered posting photos for help but could not get good enough photos to show the problem.Your photos are exactly as my plants symptoms. Last year the 2 Paul Robesons were loaded and these symptoms began on both plants ,we had a near flood and ALL my plants drowned so this problem was forgotten till this year. Same thing this year , all going well , plants loaded , the 2 Paul Robesons start this same thing again , They both have produced a good harvest , it is too hot here to expect any more tomatoes and both plants are still alive but look poor. They will be coming out tomorrow but they are still surviving and actually showing some new healthy growth after our temps dropped below 100 recently.My Cherokee Purple showed a few stems with this problem but was minimal, so I just removed the stems and none reappeared.I grow Earls Faux, M. Peace,GF ashlock, M. Lifter, Big Beef ,EP Ball, Druzba, BC Willie and none have had this problem.(Yet)
Hope someone can solve this problem. Oh, I did the stem cut and placed in water and no milky residue.
CDG

[dice]

Did you test pH to see if there was much difference between
afflicted and not afflicted plants? I was wondering about
flouride toxicity, which is more likely in low-pH soils. Plants
don't use flourine, but municipal water supplies usually have
a steady supply of it. A number of other minerals that the plant
usually has no problem with can become a problem at low
pH levels, like iron and magnesium, which become much more
soluble at low pH and may block the intake of other nutrients
that the plant needs or simply be taken up at toxic levels.

It could be something built up in the soil from the water:
flouride, chlorine, salt, etc, that affects some plants more
than others. It is interesting that the plant does not show
other nutrient deficiency symptoms, like purpling or bronzing
of the leaves, red tones, tip die-back, chlorosis, marginal
necrosis on the leaves, die-back of the growing tips, etc.
For leaves to just suddenly curl up and die without any
telltale color changes or other symptoms along the way is a
strange thing.

Maybe you will get lucky, and letting them dry out a bit will
fix it.

Edit:

PS: Since you have several affected plants, you could try a
couple of tablespoons of molasses in a gallon of water on
one of them, either adding it to the reservoir or just pouring
it on top of the container mix. The idea is to see if they are
running out of potassium, which is highly mobile in both
the soil and the plant. (Molasses is 5% potassium, and bacteria
break it down quickly.) The plant could be robbing the leaves
of potassium to ripen fruit.

[rnewste]

dice,

I really appreciate your thorough assessment as to what could be going on here.

Regarding the Florine possibility, I have been growing tomatoes at this location for the past 12 years, and not had a similar problem as I am seeing this year. pH in the 'Tainers is averaging 6.8. Couple that with the situation that many of the plants are doing just fine in their 'Tainers. Here is a photo of a Carmello pair, lush and over 8 ft. tall today:



I have gone back to what treatments I've applied over the past month or so, and I did apply a foliar spray of Triazicide to kill off some white flies I was experiencing. I remember spraying the container group in my main area - - but did NOT spray the Carmello plant which is located on the deck, and did not have the white fly problem. That is the only difference that I can recall.

In re-reading the label tonight, the Triazicide instructs on this product killing "lawn and landscape insects", but it says nothing about use (or non-use) on tomato plants. Could it be that tomato plants are much more "fragile" and that my spraying them with Triazicide may have damaged them systemically?

In any event, most of the plants are cranking out tomatoes. Here is a JD C-Tex on the left, and 2 Purple Haze plants alongside:



Ray