Leaves on some plants dying!

[RobinB]

I have started to notice some plants with dry, crunchy leaves and stems dying from the bottom up. There is not any discoloration or yellow spots anywhere, if anything they are darker green. Then I looked at the leaves above those that had dried up and noticed some that were halfway okay and halfway dead. There seems to be a fuzz on them. Is it mold, late blight, ? I do have some thrips and spider mites around, but this doesn't look like insect damage. I checked under a 30x hand lens and didn't see any insects.

Any help is appreciated. So far, the middles and tops of the three or four affected plants seem okay (I have removed and disposed of the dried up leaves and stems) so I hope that I can get a handle on this before it spreads.

Here are four photos. #2 and #3 are the two sides of the same leaf.

Thank you!
Robin

[b54red]

You could have spider mites. The last picture is the only one that looks like it could be Gray Mold to me. I wouldn't think GM would be a big problem in your dry climate but mites can be devastating in dry weather. If you do have mites then you need to get them under control as fast as possible before they spread to every plant you have.

Bill

[VC Scott]

Do the plants look like this?

Could be tomato russet mites. They are so tiny they are hard to see even under 30x magnification. They start from the bottom up. There are some threads here on how to treat. Possible treatments include predatory mites, wettable sulfur and Take Down Spray.

[Dork Fish]

I think this is the problem that I am having!

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[habitat_gardener]

Some of my plants have been getting crunchy leaves, too. At one garden it's only on a few plants, and it's only the leaves facing the afternoon sun. Given that we've had a couple heat waves, I was assuming they got fried.

At another garden, it's one plant at the end of the row facing the afternoon sun, plus a couple nearby plants that came from the same source, which is suspicious. At least all the plants have some tomatoes on them, so if that's all they produce, I'll at least get to taste them.

I've taken on too many garden sites this year, so at this point I'm trying to keep up with watering what I've planted. I picked a dozen big cucumbers yesterday, which is more than I've gotten some years.

[RobinB]

Habitat,
I do hope that's all it is, but I think it looks like mold on some. I looked at some photos of late blight yesterday, and some photos look familiar too. Then, this afternoon, I think I've found russet mites. I feel so helpless. We are also in a weather pattern with possible thunderstorms every afternoon, so spraying is going to be interesting between the wind and rain. I just saw a warning from the National Weather Service that I haven't seen before, "Hazardous Weather Outlook." I don't know which way to jump. For mold/blight issues I have some Flowable Liquid Copper Fungicide and for Mites I've got Azadirachtin (Bioneem). I don't know what to do!

[habitat_gardener]

...in denial, but looking for my hand lens...

My plants have been fine one day, then crunchy the next. Sometimes they go from fine to wilted to dark green crunchy. I haven't been seeing the "greasy" look that's supposed to accompany russet-mite damage or blights.