Severe Leaf Curl...is it over??? :(

[gssgarden]

Took these this morning. They are coustralee, Marianna's Peace, and Anna Russian. Went in three weeks ago with no problems. This past week, this started showing up.
NO pesticides or herbacides have been sprayed near them. It's gotten to 8 of 12 plants. I have NO replacements!!

Do I pull them? Wait it out?

Onlt fert they got was some fish emulsion and a little tomato tone at plant out. Also had a drench of Actinovate before plant out.

Thanks,

Greg

[Lee]

Greg,

Have you seen any aphids on the plants?

Lee

[gssgarden]

Lee,

Not one!!

No bugs at all.

Were looking great then ..BAM..this stuff.

My neighbors don't take care of their yards at all so chemical drift is really not an option btw.

Greg

[frankkj]

Had very similar if not the same on one of my plants this year. I'll have to go to the garden to check which one it was. The plant grew out of it and has set fruit. I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to pull it, but others are far more knowledgable than I.

Frank

[b54red]

Most of the plants in my garden that had something similar have pulled out of it. I did have to cut some of the stems and many of the central stalks. I gave mine a dose of MG because I didn't think I had much to lose and many improved. A few have not recovered so I will be pulling them soon. The larger the plant the easier it was to recover and the faster the recovery. It hit many of my young seedlings that were outside hardening off and they had the worst of it. I did lose about 10 out of 14 plants in one bed that had just been planted. I'm sure if I had left them all more would have recovered but I lost patience and went ahead and replaced all that were slow in recovering or not improving at all.

[Talon1189]

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[Lee]

Greg,

Can you post a plant shot, and then a garden shot, and then
a yard+ garden shot? Sometimes, that will help us spot
something that's important but may not seem relevant.....

Lee

[gssgarden]

Here they are Lee. Anna russian, Coustralee, and snif....my Shannon's!!

They other two are crammed in another bed and Early Goliath and Big Beef.

[b54red]

That is the way a lot of mine looked a week ago but many are recovering. Bet you are glad to have a couple of Big Beefs out there now.

I took a picture of one of the seedlings that had the severe leaf curl and it has now developed a new sucker that looks healthy. Below is a picture of the whole plant and you can see where I clipped out the central stem. The second photo shows the new healthy sucker.

[carolyn137]

Did you raise the plants or buy them, and if the latter what kind of place did you buy them from.

That's not just severe leaf curl it's completely distorted growth as I see it and if I were a betting lady I'd suggest one of the several gemini viruses or even Cucumber Mosaic Virus which has many alternative hosts and is sometimes hard to distinguish from Tobacco Mosaic Virus except TMV is no longer a major problem except in large greenhouse complexes where it' spread manually rather than insect mediated..

Just my opinion of what I see and I've seen pictures like that before and sorry, but the home grower has never come back and said they survived. Always a chance, but......

NCSU has everal excellent websites about tomato diseases in NC. have you looked at them or even TAMU from TX. Links to at least TAMU are in the Problem Solver at the top of this Forum and the NCSU ones can be found by Googling.

And if a Gemini virus there have to be some insect vectors somewhere nearby to have so many plants go down all at once.

[gssgarden]

Thanks Red, to be honest I didn't look at new suckers. I'll look in the am as it's dark now.

Greg

[gssgarden]

Carolyn, I always grow my own from seed. Saved seed by me except the Hybrids.
Will look at NCSU site tonight.

Can the fish emulsion do it? It's about two or three years old.

thanks,

Greg

[b54red]

Carolyn I raise all of my plants myself from seed and I have never seen anything like this before but the plants are definitely recovering except for about 10 or 15 % of them. The photo in the above post is one of the worst that is still surviving.

This stuff hit my plants overnight after a rain. It was scattered but damaged the seedlings set on a table hardening off the worst but it also hit a bunch of my plants that had been out in the garden. Some of the plants in the garden were over 4 ft tall and had been in the ground since March 16. The ones affected the worst in the ground were the more recent planted ones and particularly in one bed that was away from all the others but nearer to the hardening seedlings.

Every plant that got this curling seemed to get the first symptoms on the same day and they got worse for about a week and then started to recover or die. None of my oldest plants has died but some that had been out for over a month did. I feel it must have been something that came in on the wind or in the rain because all of the symptoms showed up within a couple of hours.

Below are a couple of pictures. The first is a part of a row of plants set out after getting the leaf curl and having the main stem cut. The other two are closeups of the small plants showing good healthy growth from the suckers. In the middle one you can easily see where the stem was cut off.

[dice]

Can the fish emulsion do it?

Fish emulsion itself, no. It would have to have been contaminated
with some kind of chemical that has that effect on plants.

Virus, viroid, or herbicide, most likely.

[Lee]

Greg,

Nothing ominous that I noticed in your added pictures, so if you haven't noticed
any aphids and there's been no herbicide spread nearby, I'm kind of stumped....

But I'm going to stick with the herbicide damage, as it hit 8 of 12 of your plants...
The year I had CMV, it was only 3~4 among 12~15 that got it. Last year, the
2-4D hit everything it came close to.

I just can't explain how it effected your plants, since you said no herbicide has
been sprayed anywhere......

Lee