Spots on leaves... please help ID

luvmykitty · August 6, 2012

Good afternoon,
A few of my tomato plants have these symptoms in the following pics. The disease started on the bottom leaves and is working its way up the insides of the plants. Healthy green leaves get the spots, then turn yellow and “spottier”. The main stems on the bottom also are speckled but otherwise green. The green fruits are unaffected. I trimmed off the bad branches and sprayed with copper soap, which isn’t working too great so far- it’s still spreading. I’ve looked at dozens of online photos, sort of looks like septoria to me, but resembles some photos of bacterial spot or speck. Any thoughts on what this could be? And the best way to treat it?

Thank you.

Mark0820 · August 6, 2012

The first few photos look a lot like the bacterial spot I am experiencing this year (my first experience with it). Do you have any tomatoes with small black spots on them? If you do, that would be a pretty good confirmation (bacterial spot or speck).

I'm not very good at identifying disease, so you probably will want to wait until someone more experienced comes along.

If it is bacterial spot, the recommended solution is a copper fungicide. I just started adding Actinovate to my copper fungicide.

ca1ore · August 10, 2012

Could also be septoria.

b54red · August 10, 2012

The infection looks pretty widespread. Has it been raining a lot? Sometimes that makes those type diseases spread so much faster. I don't know which of the spot or speck diseases you have and you could have more than one; but they are very hard to stop once they get going good.

You could spray with a dilute bleach solution to kill off some of the spores and then apply a fungicide to prevent further spread. I did this 4 summers ago when my plants were hit really hard after a long rainy spell; but I did lose a lot of leaves. I repeated the spraying for a couple of weeks every 5 to 7 days and eventually got it under control.

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August 6, 2012	#2
Mark0820 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Cincinnati Posts: 907	The first few photos look a lot like the bacterial spot I am experiencing this year (my first experience with it). Do you have any tomatoes with small black spots on them? If you do, that would be a pretty good confirmation (bacterial spot or speck). I'm not very good at identifying disease, so you probably will want to wait until someone more experienced comes along. If it is bacterial spot, the recommended solution is a copper fungicide. I just started adding Actinovate to my copper fungicide.

August 10, 2012	#3
ca1ore Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Stamford, CT Posts: 13	Could also be septoria.

August 10, 2012	#4
b54red Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Alabama Posts: 7,068	The infection looks pretty widespread. Has it been raining a lot? Sometimes that makes those type diseases spread so much faster. I don't know which of the spot or speck diseases you have and you could have more than one; but they are very hard to stop once they get going good. You could spray with a dilute bleach solution to kill off some of the spores and then apply a fungicide to prevent further spread. I did this 4 summers ago when my plants were hit really hard after a long rainy spell; but I did lose a lot of leaves. I repeated the spraying for a couple of weeks every 5 to 7 days and eventually got it under control.