Worried about my tomatoes

[brendang]

Hello Tomatoville,
Can you all take a look at these pictures? The tomatoes i have in ground are not fruiting yet but the foliage is a deep green color. The tomatoes that are in containers have large fruit already but the thing thats worrying me is that the plants seem to be a lighter shade of green and a few of the container tomatoes have dark patches on a couple of the leaves. Ive attached a photo. Is this normal for plants that are putting a lot of energy into their fruit? I should mention that both in ground and container tomatoes are Brandywine and the week before last there was a lot of rain and little sun.
Would appreciate any help.
Brendan
http://img35.imageshack.us/f/dscn0200xv.jpg/
http://img72.imageshack.us/f/dscn0198f.jpg/
http://img710.imageshack.us/f/dscn0199t.jpg/

[brendang]

Please click on the little photos to enlarge them.

[Tomatovator]

Brendan, I'm in SW Pennsylvania and I have the exact situation with my plants that are in pots. I'm assuming it is too much water and the pots are not draining well. I'm just going to wait it out and see what happens. I even have the spots you have on some of my leaves. Could also be that the pots are too small for the plant I have in them??

[dice]

It looks like some mineral deficiency. I have leaf spotting like
that on one container plant. I have not figured out what exactly
it is missing yet. It did have some purpling on the bottoms of
leaves, too, a classic phosphorus deficiency symptom, but it
does not have the heavily dimpled leaves in the photos at the
website below, so I am not sure. I tried a tablespoon of high
phosphate guano mixed into the top of the soil and a foliar
feeding of 0-10-10 to see if that fixes it.

http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289

An overall "not very green" appearance is usually "needs a
little more nitrogen", but not always. It has been fairly cool
and rainy here, too, since the first of May.

[brendang]

I transplanted them into 7 gallon pots about about a month ago. The soil had lots of loam and peat moss and manure. Is there any way that they could have depleted that already? Debating whether i should put some organic fertilizer on my girls.
Thanks again.

[dustdevil]

Another point...you have the toms by arborvitae...evergreen needles are acidic...maybe ph is off a bit.

[dice]

The soil had lots of loam and peat moss and
manure.

Maybe the manure was low-nitrogen to begin with (like really
well composted)? Whatever you try, I would do it in moderation.
Put a little on, water it in (if it is not raining), check in two
weeks, add a little more if it seems necessary, until the plant
looks like you think it should look, given the weather.

[brendang]

Thank you much.
Have added some organic fertilizer.
Will update you all when/if things perk up.
Thanks again

[brendang]

http://www.perfectlynatural.com/lawn...lty-tomato.php

Thats the fertilizer i added. I hope it's ok.

[dice]

Thats the fertilizer i added.

I have not used it, but it looks like fairly mild stuff
with that low nitrogen level, so it should be ok.

[brendang]

I guess it's not all that concentrated and im not sure that it's going to be all that available to the plants. I think its fairly slow acting. Was trying to avoid chemical fertilizers. Do you think thats a better option?

[b54red]

You might also have an iron deficiency which can be fixed with an iron supplement spray. I had that problem one cool spring when my soil had become too alkaline which slows the uptake of some minerals like iron. I sprayed everything in the garden twice with the iron foliage spray and in a few days everything was much greener.

[dice]

I do not think chemical fertilizers are better. Sometimes I use
them in an emergency. I usually try a foliar feed with those
(assuming that they are not time-release pellets or something
like that; usually a liquid fertilizer or the granular blue stuff
that dissolves completely). That gives me some idea whether
a lack of nutrients is really the problem.

Ammonia has been implicated as a contributing factor in
blossom end rot (BER), so one wants to use chemical fertilizers
that have their nitrogen in nitrate form for that sort of test.