Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (w/ Pix)

lakeshorenc · February 4, 2008

Thought I'd post about my experience last year with this problem. I had a beautiful tomato garden with 30+ plants, mostly heirlooms. They got to be 5 to 6 feet tall and loaded with tomatoes. Then I started noticing the spots, yellow leaves then the wilting on about 3 or 4 plants, so I pulled them. I then decided to start spraying an insecticide once a week. I also removed the bottom leaves. This seemed to help slow the spread to the others but the TSWV still eventually progressed to most of the them (except my Sweet 100). I decided to not pull what I had left and I actually ended up with an OK season. Not the one of my day dreams but we had tomatoes until late August. I found that on some plants only 1/4 to 1/2 of the plant would wilt and the tomatoes continued to grow and turn color. I didn't get to much fruit damage, only on some of the fruit and late in the season. I like the tin foil idea so I'll give that a try and I like the idea of cutting off the lower leaves, the soaker hose, and mulch, mulch, mulch. Just thought I'd share this. Theresa

February 4, 2008	#11
lakeshorenc Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2007 Location: Lake Waccamaw NC Posts: 19	Thought I'd post about my experience last year with this problem. I had a beautiful tomato garden with 30+ plants, mostly heirlooms. They got to be 5 to 6 feet tall and loaded with tomatoes. Then I started noticing the spots, yellow leaves then the wilting on about 3 or 4 plants, so I pulled them. I then decided to start spraying an insecticide once a week. I also removed the bottom leaves. This seemed to help slow the spread to the others but the TSWV still eventually progressed to most of the them (except my Sweet 100). I decided to not pull what I had left and I actually ended up with an OK season. Not the one of my day dreams but we had tomatoes until late August. I found that on some plants only 1/4 to 1/2 of the plant would wilt and the tomatoes continued to grow and turn color. I didn't get to much fruit damage, only on some of the fruit and late in the season. I like the tin foil idea so I'll give that a try and I like the idea of cutting off the lower leaves, the soaker hose, and mulch, mulch, mulch. Just thought I'd share this. Theresa Last edited by lakeshorenc; May 18, 2009 at 08:35 AM.