Total destruction
 

It appears that I will have no tomatoes this year.40 years of growing experience.I do all the suggested growing and care methods; raise from seeds, have great plants, 3 rd. week in garden in April 50 dg. nighte time lows or above.Plants 2 1/2 ft. high looking beautiful.
First noticed very edge of some leaves turning brown around entire edge of leaves.Had started 10 day daconil +'s neem spray and rotate to copper next 10 days.Lost 50% of all foliage in 10/12 days with continual spraying and final clorox sprey.Clorox killed all infected leaves.Which meant 1/2 of all leaves on plant.
Remaining leaves were clear 8/10 days yellowing started again after 10 days.No tomatoes produced.
Sent a plant to Clemson Pathology lab today just hope I can Id. my problem.Have NEVER seen anything like this before.Uaually giving away tomatoes be this time of year in central South Carolina every year.
Very bewildered, have No idea what is going on with my tomatoes.Have corn, cukes and butter beans doing well.Will be waiting for plant pathology analysis.

That's really awful. Hope the plant pathology analysis turns up something--at least you have a reason then.

Uh oh.
Plant patient zero.
Sept 1845 some potato farmers went through the same thing in Ireland.

It's turning out to be a bad year for a lot of people...

I agree pmcgrady.

Rick9748, that is awful. I hope it turns out to be something that can be prepared for and fixed.

So sad. I know how you feel. It is like the year I got Late Blight for the first time. I never saw it before but it swept through my tomatoes like wildfire and killed them all in a matter of about a week. There was no stopping it but at least I had some tomatoes before it hit.

Sorry to hear about yours.

Oh no, I'm really sorry to hear this! I hope they can diagnose it, and that it is not a soil-borne pathogen that cannot be easily killed!

ouch! That's got to hurt! I myself was worried this year. The first plants I put in did horribly. I got 1 ugly tomato off all of them.

Strange fate though. I had visited my parents in Florida, so was delayed in planting. The late planted tomatoes are all doing fantastic.

It sounds like it could be several things or something I have never dealt with before. My first guess would be TSWV. Neem oil sprays can damage the leaves especially if the mix is too strong and even worse if done when the sun can hit the leaves before it dries in hot weather. You could also be dealing with RKN and or Fusarium wilt. The fact that the bleach spray shriveled up diseased leaves makes it sound like you also have some form of foliage disease of which there are many. I lost 80% of my foliage to EB on my first bed of tomatoes that I planted during the past three weeks of daily rain and even though it only stopped raining two days ago I have already found spider mites on a half dozen of my older plants. Spider mites could also be the main culprit and if you aren't familiar with them they can devastate a whole garden before you even know what you are dealing with. I hope you find out what is causing the problems so you can take steps to alleviate them. If it is a soil born problem then grafting is the route to go. Nothing else is as effective or easy to solve the problem of most soil born pathogens.

It could even have been something so bad as an early summer case of Late Blight which I have had happen twice in the last 40 years. It is bad enough when it hits in the fall but it is doubly bad in the summer.

Bill

It will be interesting to see what the Clemson lab has to say. Please update this when you find out. Good luck going forward.

Will be sure to give update.

Late update from last Summer.Live potted plant sent to Clemson.Pathologist called we talked no id.offered.Most likely culprit "something" came in on some of my seeds.Strictly limited my seed sources and no outside plants.Problem did not appear this year.
Did scorched earth policy after season: strip garden of ALL organic material, clorox 5% ALL of garden + all tools + tiller anything that was going back into garden.Then copper again ALL beds, paths every sq. ft. of garden.Just tried everything I could think of to create a sterile environment.
Don't know if any of this work helped but problem did not come back.
Could have been just bad seeds.
All worth it just to not see those brown edges on leaves = KISS of DEATH!!
I know we all have our own tomato WAR stories.I sure don't to see this one again.

So sad to have this happen and then never know what happened. That makes it really scary.

[QUOTE=rick9748;712242]Late update from last Summer.Live potted plant sent to Clemson.Pathologist called we talked no id.offered.Most likely culprit "something" came in on some of my seeds.Strictly limited my seed sources and no outside plants.Problem did not appear this year.
Did scorched earth policy after season: strip garden of ALL organic material, clorox 5% ALL of garden + all tools + tiller anything that was going back into garden.Then copper again ALL beds, paths every sq. ft. of garden.Just tried everything I could think of to create a sterile environment.
Don't know if any of this work helped but problem did not come back.
Could have been just bad seeds.
All worth it just to not see those brown edges on leaves = KISS of DEATH!!
I know we all have our own tomato WAR stories.I sure don't to see this one again.[/QUOTE]

Rick, give us lots of photos next time trouble starts. I and some others here are pretty good at diagnosing.

I had a new one hit me last summer. TYLCV killed all the plants in my garden in August. I had never seen it before in over 40 years of growing tomatoes but it obviously came in with the mass of whiteflies we had last year. My late planted tomatoes are setting fruit right now and I am also seeing increased whitefly activity. I'm just hoping that variety of whitefly that carries TYLCV is not among them this year.

I hate that they didn't give you a diagnosis but maybe it will be just one of those mysteries you will never know the answer to and hopefully will never see again.

Bill