New tomato problem....

[aclum]

Hi,

Well, it seems that I have some new and different problem going on in the garden now.. It involves what I thought might be a Sweet Linda (lost a couple of labels along the way), but the variety is sort of a moot point at the moment as the plant is no longer with us.

Perhaps 4 or 5 days ago (can't remember exactly), the leaves started getting lighter and turning sort of a light rusty orange-brown color. By April 30th, the color changes were very noticeable - as shown in the photo. Nearby plants were not affected (though some of them still have remnants of some different problems of their own that I've previously discussed in another thread).

I got around to pulling the plant this morning and you can see in the photos what I found. I couldn't see any insects with my 20x and 40x loupe, but I did see a bit of something on the leaves that looked a bit like cob-webbing or spittle (but very sparse). Looks like something's been eating the leaves and possibly also the stem near the root (unless the missing "bark" is due to disease rather than insect damage).

I find the red area at the bottom of the stem cutaway particularly interesting. I put the cut stem into a class of water and no noticeable milky (or other) discharge. The roots themselves looked OK to me.

Anne