Two tomato problems...

[O.P. Mater]

Am sending pictures and believe that the first picture is of Late Blight, but would like someone to confirm it. I have been studying the disease sites and hope that I have it right, but am not sure. It is showing up on different plants here and there...usually on the bottom leaves. I pulled 4 small bags of leaves and limbs this evening from 90 plants....all with the same appearance. I left the garden at 9pm when I could no longer see. Have about 30 more plants to check out first thing in the morning.

The second picture may be Bacterial Speck? It is more pronounced on the back of the leaf and is spreading on two plants. It started on the bottom and has worked its way halfway up the plant and was on a lot of interior and younger leaves. It reminds me of a bad case of chicken pox. Could this be something that I would use 2 aspirin/gallon for or 8 oz of clorox/gallon or should I pull them?

Thanks so much for your ideas about treatments or removal of plants. Sandy

[bcday]

The two big brown spots on the leaves in the first pic are not Late Blight. They look like Early Blight to me -- see the concentric rings, faint but kind of like the growth rings you'd see on a tree stump. Late Blight has irregular borders instead of that neat oval or circular shape and doesn't have those rings. Early Blight is a whole different disease from Late Blight but it's still a fungus so chlorothalonil or the anti-fungal of your choice should help. I can also see what might be flea beetle damage, those tiny chewed holes, on the leaves at the bottom of the first pic.

The second pic shows what looks like Septoria, lots of small round spots with dark edges and light centers. You need to get on that with an anti-fungal of some sort and hope the weather cooperates to keep the foliage dry. Also clean up every bit of foliage at the end of the year and bag it with the household trash, don't put it in your compost pile. Septoria can overwinter even on dead foliage and through freezing temperatures, something Late Blight can't do.

So no, neither of those pics look like Late Blight to me but you still need to do something about preventing the diseases from spreading.

More info here:
Septoria: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/450/450-711/450-711.html
Early Blight and Septoria: http://www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/veg/htms/tomdis.htm
Late Blight: http://www.longislandhort.cornell.ed...ght_tomato.htm

[O.P. Mater]

bcday.......thanks so much for your reply. I agree with the Early Blight and did mean to write Early Blight.......I think 1:00am keyboarding may be fraught with peril after a day that started at 5:30am.

I appreciate the links and will get busy treating the "Early" Blight and Septoria as soon as the dew drys on the tomato leaves. It's 71 here right now and predictions are for 100 today. I do have a lot of tomato plants in the garden and if it would be better to pull the Septoria infected plants I don't mind doing it.

Thanks so much......have bookmarked the links for future reference and hope to get better at diagnosing the diseases that are popping up in the tomatoes. Have a great day!

[WVTomatoMan]

I agree. The first picture is classic Early Blight. If you look closely I suspect you'll see the bull's eye which is a dead giveaway. The second one looks like Septoria leaft spot (some people around here call it blight too). There is no reason to pull the plants. My plants get both of those foliage diseases almost every year. Even if left untreated you would probably still get a fairly good crop. But, why not treat them? I haven't tried the home remedies you mentioned so I don't know their effectiveness. There are several organic and non organic treatments you can use. This year I'm using Serenade for pre symtom treatment and the old stand by Daconil for post symtom treatment. I'm still experimenting, but so far it seems that a mixture of treatments works best for me. There is another treatment that has been around for a long time and that is copper. It is organic and is still widely used.

Good luck.

Randy

[O.P. Mater]

Randy, thanks for your reply. I just finished spraying with copper shield & Actinovate. It's going to get really hot today, so I finished the spraying this morning. Yesterday evening was really hot and I didn't get finished before it got dark and the deer flies started harassing me.
This morning, I was trying to decide about pulling some plants and was glad to read your response. They are loaded with lots of green tomatoes. I tried to use most of the tips on this site this year starting with seeds and so far the tomatoes look the best and have put on more fruit than ever. Glad to read your experiences and will keep treating them and hope for ripe tomatoes soon!

Those homemade remedies are on this site and you can find them if you do a search. Haven't tried the aspirin one yet, but we used the clorox spray last year on lower leaves of tomatoes and also on some cucumbers that had powdery mildew. It worked great for us. I try to keep mixing things up. Will look up Serenade and may try it next year.

Thanks again for your reply. Happy gardening, Sandy