Hopefully just rot and not the beginnings of something like verticillium wilt showing itself...

When you said the plant had no real roots left, it brought up images of what used to happen to mine before I started grafting with resistant rootstock. What did the leaves on the Matina look like?

V wilt is a fungal disease that thrives in cool, wet conditions so some years the effect is worse than others. And I've noticed in my beds, at least, it hits harder in some spots than others. As I said, I hope that's not what you have, but look into it and see if you can cross it off the list.

I believe that both Verticillium and Fusarium wilt will cause some yellowing of the leaves and possibly brown streaks on the inside or outside of the stems. Mine had none of this, just wilting with green leaves and a brown band around the stem so I really believe that it's the damping off fungus which is always in the soil and probably entered the stems through injuries, maybe even the fresh wounds that I caused by cutting off the bottom branches before planting deeper.

I planted my new seedlings in the same holes so if there is disease in the soil then I will know soon enough if the new plants succumb to the same brown stem problem but so far so good.

The yellowing of the leaves usually shows up after the wilting starts on my plants. The wilting was always my early warning sign that a plant was about to fall to the disease. And the brown bands are actually inside the stems. You would need to cut through the stems to examine the inside in order to see it.

Fingers crossed your replacement plants do well.

all appears to be well here.


replacement plants planted in the same holes are doing well. the matina that i
rescued is alive and growing in a pot though still small. all the other plants are
looking good. it's odd that just the matina, and the one sun gold were affected.
i don't plant deep simply because the soil is still on the cool side early june.


the weather here can be erratic the first couple weeks of june. you get a few teaser
days with highs in the 80s, and you think, finally time to plant, then we always seem to get one last week of miserable cold wet weather before the heat switch stays in the on position. just can't seem to avoid it. i didn't even check the tomatoes closely that week. i knew they wouldn't be doing anything. if i had done so, i might have been able to save some of the other plants. that's life in the north.




keith

[QUOTE=Father'sDaughter;757599]The yellowing of the leaves usually shows up after the wilting starts on my plants. The wilting was always my early warning sign that a plant was about to fall to the disease. And the brown bands are actually inside the stems. You would need to cut through the stems to examine the inside in order to see it.

Fingers crossed your replacement plants do well.[/QUOTE]

I did cut the stems open and it was brown through the entire stem but only at the one area at the band. No brown steaks above the brown band. The stem above it was totally green and looked healthy.