Early Season Tomato Crisis

[Di Taylor]

Help. I have had a couple of bad seasons tomato wise with disease striking and losing most of my plants part way through the season. This year my strategy was to start small with some store bought seedlings: 1 Pink Brandy Wine, 1 Black Krim, 1 Sweet 100 Red Cherry and a White Cherry. Because of previous years problems I put these four plants in a part of the garden that hasn't had tomatoes for years, I used new bought compost. I did however stake them with last years wooden stakes, these were overwintered in the garage and so were very dry. Six weeks after planting and they all have issues. The red cherry has dropped its flowers without setting fruit, however this may be a diurnal temperature thing and it looks otherwise healthy, the rest however all have different issues. The Pink Brandy Wine I suspect has a wilt virus of some sort and the others I dont know. I have another dozen seedlings ready to plant out of three other variets that I have grown myself and I'm too scare to put them anywhere in the garden till I work out where I have gone wrong. Pictures for you to look at, I'm hoping someone can identify my problem and help me sort it out. PS I generally garden organically and prefer not to spray if I can avoid it.
The Black Krim has the curling leaves, the white cherry has the markings on the leaves that look like pest damage and also the bendy deformed growth... the brandywine is easy to pick cos its almost dead The last photo shows a branch that looks like it has a right angle in it, its actually and twirly bit - it really is deformed, stunted leaves and bendy branches

[RinTinTin]

Not saying that this is your problem, but before putting away stakes, cages, tools, etc at the end of the season, give them a good spray with chlorine, alcohol, or other disinfectant. No sense overwintering bugs, eggs, or pathogens in your warm shed.

[dice]

The Black Krim with the leaf roll is probably ok. They commonly
do that just from temperature changes. The plant still grows and
produces just fine.

With the others, you could have bug-borne viruses or viroids
(meaning nothing wrong with your soil, stakes, etc).

When the leaves just curl around their spine, longitudinally,
that is rarely a fatal problem. When the stem or spine of the
leaf itself curls, or the growing tips get all twisted looking,
the plant is usually doomed and should be pulled to avoid
letting sap-sucking insects spread whatever disease it has
to other nearby plants.

Some pictures:
Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus, Potato Spindle Tuber Viroid,
and Silverleaf Whitefly (pictures at bottom of article):
http://new.dpi.vic.gov.au/agricultur...e-tuber-viroid

Cucumber Mosaic Virus:
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...ucumMV_Tom.htm

Potato leafroll virus:
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...LfRoll_Tom.htm

A pretty good general guide (many of these N. American
tomato diseases will not be found in NZ or Australia, but
anything carried by bugs and their eggs can migrate in
ways that we have not anticipated):
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...omWiltKey.html

Neem oil in soapy water will keep *some* bugs off of your
plants. Whiteflies seem to ignore it, though.

[Medbury Gardens]

I hope you've got some good advice there from dice & RinTinTin Di,sorry i couldn't have been more help when we talked the other day.
I have the benefit of an much dryer inland climate were Di is near the coast,as a result she experiences higher humidity levels than i do and so i think this is what maybe the underlying problem.
Im lucky that ive have very little experience with any tomato diseases

[dice]

You could give them some aspirin, too. It activates plant immune
systems.

You could crush a couple of aspirin in a mortar and pestle or
between two spoons, dissolve it in a gallon of warm water, and
water the plants with it. Foliar spraying with it helps, too, but if
you already have humidity problems, just letting the roots take
it in may be a better idea.

It will not stop a virus that has already infected a plant or a
severe bacterial or fungal infection, but it can help plants that
are not yet infected fight off plant diseases by pre-starting
immune system reactions in plants.

[Marko]

Di Taylor, looks like you have soil issues. Last three pics show nutritional disorder. Perhaps the ph of your soil is too low.

[Fusion_power]

There are three possibilities and none of them are disease.

1. The soil ph is way off either high or low.

2. The supply of nutrients is totally off the scale too low.

3. The compost you used either has a boat load of salt or it was dosed with a weed killer somewhere along the production trail.

You can eliminate the PH problem by getting a soil test kit and checking.

You can add nutrients using a micronutrient fortified liquid fertilizer.

But if you have either salt or weedkiller in the compost, you are a dead duck.

DarJones

[maricybele]

Other possibilities could be too much water or overhead watering.
I place empty pots in the ground and water in the pots not the soil. Some folks use other methods of deep watering.
My plants are happiest when I water when the soil is on the dry side.