Help - can someone ID this foliage disorder? (pics)

[HakaiRah]

Originally Posted by Tomaddict

Eric,
I want to throw out another possibility for the cause of this problem. Coincidentally I just minutes ago returned from a lecture by a researcher who has been part of a large effort examining the impact of elevated ozone and carbon dioxide levels on northern hardwood forests. The photos he showed of ozone damage to leaves (of both trees and smaller plants on the forest floor) are very similar to the pictures you provided in your first post. He also noted during the presentation that ozone was more damaging during wet weather, because the stoma (pores in leaves) are open wider, and so gases have more impact than during dry and/or warmer weather when the stoma are closed or barely open.

So, do you leave in or near an urban environment, or downwind from an industrial area? (BTW, I happen to live in SW Michigan, not near an urban environment, but we're 100 or so miles downwind from the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor and so SW Michigan is on average one of the higher ozone areas in the country... but I have not noticed this sort of problem with my 'maters or other garden plants).

So I have no idea if this is the real cause, but just wanted to mention it as a possibility that hadn't been suggested yet.

This is an interesting link to a catalog of peak ozone concentrations and you can even see how they changed throughout a given day. My damage showed up right in the timeframe of bad ozone spikes in my area. It is something I'll dbl-check should any show up in the future.

[Eric02476]

For what it's worth, my damage also showed up during significant ozone spikes (I'm not terribly far from HaKaiRah). And yes, I'm about 7 miles from Boston. I leave it to the scientists here to say whether that's likely to be just coincidence or otherwise. Interesting info and map.

[HakaiRah]

I hope the Black Cheeries ripen quickly, I may just have to stick them in a bag with a banana so I can get my first fix of the year. Since I've never grown Black Cheery tomatoes before I have no clue how long it takes from blush to munch.