Disease Help Please!

[graceshine]

Hi All,

Any idea what's going on with my Pruden's Purple?? It starts with the edges crisping, and then spots forming on the middle of the leaf. I have photos of younger leaves (with just crispy edges) and older leaves.

I'm debating just pulling the whole thing and starting over since even the new leaves are coming in this way :(

Thanks in advance for your help. I love this forum!

[Stepheninky]

If you are seeing the same thing on the stems I would take a guess that it is Gray mold, either way though from the pics it looks like a mold or mildew issue. You can use a product called Draconil or even try using a bleach and water solution (about 1-2 cap fulls of bleach to a gal of water).

If the plants are in the ground then the spores would still be present so replacing the plants might help but they probably would be effected as well. I would try and treat the problem first and see if it helps. After the treatment if you do decide to replace plants least you will have a solution ready at hand to prevent or nip it out as soon as it starts.

There are also some other more natural products others can chime in on for you as well.

[graceshine]

Hi Stepheninky thank you so much for chiming in! It didn't even occur to me that it might be a mold because of the little circle spots that were showing up in the middle of the leaf. I am not seeing any damage so far to stems, just leaves.

I am definitely interested in hearing about other natural approaches to helping this problem.

Thank you!

[rnewste]

Grace,

You could be experiencing two separate issues. One, when you turn the leaf over, do you see any signs of insects like Aphids or Thrips? I am north of you by a few hundred miles and this is what I saw last week:



Turns out, this damage was caused by these guys:



Second, the leaf burn around the edges could be caused by fertilizer burn.

I would not pull the plants at this time, as they do look relatively healthy otherwise.

Raybo

[graceshine]

Hello Raybo, Thank you so much for chiming in!

Yikes those look like nasty little buggers! Hope you caught them before they did real damage. The underside of the leaves on my plants are actually undisturbed. You think the little (but growing) specks are caused by fertilizer burn?

Grace

[rnewste]

Grace,

When you turn the leaf over and are sure you do not see any "critters", then the brown edges in your photos *may* have been caused by too much fertilizer. Again, I speculate this as in a previous post you said there were no lesions on the vines themselves - just on the leaves. Your photo #3 is indicative of this.

With some insects, you really need a magnifying glass to examine, especially for Tomato Russet Mites that were prevalent in California last year.

Raybo

[graceshine]

Raybo,

There's nothing visible to the naked eye that I can see. So maybe I'll have to add a magnifying glass to my tomato care arsenal and check it out I found 2 tomatoes growing on the plant so I'm going to keep it for a bit and see what happens!

By the way, I've planted all my plants in my EB's this year with your 3:2:1 mix and can't wait to see the results. In the past I've found my EB tomatoes to taste a bit watery!

Thanks much as always,
Grace

[graceshine]

Do you think certain plants are more prone to fertilizer burn than others? I have the Pruden's Purple planted in an EB with Morado, and Morado is totally unaffected.

Oh the mysteries of growing tomatoes.

[z_willus_d]

All-

I'm gardening tomatoes in my small East Sacramento backyard (surrounded by two neighbors to the back and side who also grow). This is my second year and I have two moderately sized raised beds. This prolonged-- cold, wet Spring has already taken two of my 25-30 Toms; the rest have suffered mightily to say the least. I planted through early-mid-late April this year, earlier than last.

Now nearly all of my plants have been hit by EXACTLY the same ailment that Grace has described above. I would take/paste pictures but it would be redundant with what posted above. (I even have a pair of Purples showing, so it's an easy comparison.) I've spent hours searching the forums for a post that seems to match this specific issue, and until now I've failed in finding one.

In any case, here's some background on what I've tried. I will say that the general condition of my plants has improved since about 5 days ago when the weather (after 3+ weeks of gloom) final improved to something sort of like June in CA. I even have a few cherry fruits slowly popping up. Still, I continue to see the spread of the above described condition, despite my having lopped off the bottom two-thirds of many of these poor guys (a little at a time as I would dare). I tried applying a mix of beneficial nematodes (http://www.amazon.com/Scanmask-Milli...7902333&sr=1-1), which incidentally performed wonders on a fruit fly infestation that had taken over my garage worm factory bins. I also tried an organic fungicide (http://www.amazon.com/Fungicide3-Ins...7902409&sr=1-1), which seemed to have absolutely ZERO effect.

One of the worst aspects of this problem is that in many cases it seems to even spread to my nascent blooms, then eventually the flower entire drops off. To Raybo’s first point, I have noted on certain leafs and flowers, infestations of the exact Red aphids (?) he’s shown. I always proceed to annihilate the creepers the moment I find them, which tends to leave me with bloody fingertips. Generally though, I haven’t noted these buggers on most plants. When I showed my sad leaf-branches to my back neighbor, she thought my leafs looked to be munched up by something as well. As for Raybo’s 2nd point, the fert-burn, I can say I’ve only used a single application of fish emulsion at planting and otherwise, mainly home-made worm castings. In full disclosure, I did mix the soil with a good dose of horse manure from a local ranch (hopefully sufficiently aged, though likely not). Much of the manure still had lots of red wrigglers, which I took as a good thing, but now thinking about it in retrospect, I figure that should have been a sign of not fully decomposed fecal matter. So, maybe I’m burning my plants with the manure. Still, I think it’s strange that it took a while for the black creep to show, and also the way it first shows on the older bottom branches/leafs and seems to spread by osmosis upwards. I’m just not sure.

So, now I’m about ready to try the Stepheninky’s Draconil and bleach treatments, and I might even try a copper based spray for full measure. I’d appreciate any other thoughts on this very sleep-inhibiting condition (yes, I do have bad dreams about a rotted out and dead garden). Should I proceed with the chemical Fungicide bombs? Would additional pic posts help?

Thanks,
Naysen

[b54red]

It doesn't look like the gray mold that I have had problems with this year. Below is a picture of early gray mold on some leaves and a second picture of more advanced damage.

[dice]

Googling for information on tomato plants with damaged leaf
margins, I came across this fairly detailed document on symptoms
of different kinds of diseases, chemical damage, etc:
http://www.hgic.umd.edu/_media/documents/hg56.pdf

Potential nutrient problems that can cause this include potassium
deficiency (rarely seen in fertilized plants) and boron toxicity (excess
boron).

It can also be a symptom of fertilizer burn (excess salts of various kinds
from fertilizers building up in the leaf margins and leaf tips).

[z_willus_d]

Dice- thanks for the reference. That hg56.pdf is quite a nice compendium of tomato info.

I sprayed a Bonide copper-based fungicide on the plants at dusk yesterday, just in case there's any chance I might be suffering from a spore. I'm starting to agree this may simply be a case of Nitrogen burn, despite the fact that new top growth seems clear and green for a while before it starts to show the descriptors (brown->black at the leaf margins moving inward; sometimes holes in the leafs).

As I stated above, I dropped a good load (about 1/2 my bed worth) of Horse poop into these raised beds only 1-2 weeks before transplanting in the baby toms. The poop was supposed to be composted, but I doubt for very long based on the look of it and number of actively composting worms I found in the mix. I guess, in my mind, I was hoping the good of the wormies might compensate for the bad of the Nitrogen/ammonia and potential for burn.

On a separate but related topic, I wonder if the pervasive blossom drop I'm getting on nearly all my heirloom sets might be due to the over-fertilization (manure) as well. Originally, it just looked like the flowers were succumbing to some rot or fungus (black on the surrounding green, then dry up and drop), but now that the cool, damp, rain weather has past, I'm finding it hard to blame my atmospheric conditions. Will fertilizer (un-composted horse manure) result in blossom drop and failure to set fruit? I only see a few green balls on my various cherry vines.

Thanks again.

[dice]

Originally Posted by z_willus_d

As I stated above, I dropped a good load (about 1/2 my bed worth) of Horse poop into these raised beds only 1-2 weeks before transplanting in the baby toms.

I have filled a raised bed with half horse manure, but it had sat out over
the winter piled a foot to a foot and a half deep on another bed. No
problems. I had abundant vegetative growth, but no blossom drop
or inhibition of fruit set from it. Fairly fresh stuff I mix with leaves
and grass clippings in a compost pile and use it months later. So I have
no information on whether you can get high-nitrogen fertilizer burn
from too-fresh horse manure. Usually when one sees that it is from
excess synthetic fertilizers with a lot of urea or ammonium in them,
but people have done it with too much fresh chicken manure and
too much bloodmeal, too.

Figure that the safest manures are rabbit, llama, and alpaca (maybe
goat, too). Those three you can put on or in a garden bed fresh without
composting them without worrying about fertilizer burn.

One thing to watch for with horse manure in recent years is aminopyralid
contamination (a broadleaf herbicide that the horses do not digest), but
the symptoms are completely different than what graceshine's pictures
showed (twisted up growing tips, like 2,4-D or Roundup damage:
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/aminopyralid/
http://www.manurematters.com/na/en/hay_sales.htm
)

Horse manure is plentiful and usually free, so it gets used a lot for
adding fertilizer and organic matter to garden beds. Usually this is
a good idea.

To flush excess fertilizer out of a container, usually twice the container
volume of water will be sufficient (10 gallons of water poured through
a 5 gallon container, for example). Flushing a raised bed could take
quite a bit more water, depending on the drainage underneath it,
and that could create other problems of its own (iron uptake will suffer
while it is waterlogged, etc).

[tam91]

I wonder if there's any way to make sure horse manure is free of aminopyralid before you put it in your garden?

[dice]

[aminopyralid test]
Dow Agrosciences suggest taking 4 5" pots, putting half manure and
half non-manure compost in two of them, and all compost in the
other two. Then plant "broad bean" seeds (fava bean probably works
for this) in all four of them and water. Within 4 weeks you should see
symptoms on the plants in the pots with manure if it is contaminated.

One could also use tomato seeds, buckwheat, other plants that
aminopyralid will damage at low concentrations.