What Do You Think?

[RayR]

I still don't see anything that is identifiable as a fungal disease. It Still looks like drought stress.

Drought stress on tomatoes

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by RayR

I still don't see anything that is identifiable as a fungal disease. It Still looks like drought stress.

Drought stress on tomatoes

I dont see any of the tell tale darkening of the stems like blight has and like mine do every year.

With the tomatoes being in a raised bed with a heavy clay bottom it may very well be drought stress.
This can happen no mater how much water you throw at them under these conditions.

I can promise you though that what ever it is, it is not good to dust the plants from the lawn mower.
Worth

[AlittleSalt]

Ray, that's what I'm reading about now. This site suggests to water daily during drought http://homeguides.sfgate.com/tomato-...ght-29709.html I've been watering every fourth evening. I have a lot more reading to do.

Worth, the new mower we bought can be used without the bag or the side shoot. it's actually easier to mulch/mow without the side shoot attached. That's how I will mow in that area from now on. I have a few other ideas that would eliminate mowing altogether around the raised beds.

[Worth1]

Salt I would like to add that sometimes with a raised bed you have to treat it like a container depending on the circumstances.

This is one of the reasons I highly recommend (((not))) using them unless absolutely necessary.
Some of the reasons for a raised bed are-----.
Completely poor soil like you and I have in places.
Limestone slabs like they have in west Austin with little or no soil at all in places.
Who would have thought land barely fit to raise a goat on would be worth billions some day.
Contaminated soil like they have in many metropolitan areas like the LA area of California.
Tree and weed invasion where it is far better to lay down a slab of concrete then put the bed on it.
Kicking myself for not doing this one but I left myself a way out.

As for me I have been watering the beds every day and just yesterday I turned the water time way down.


Worth

[AlittleSalt]

I emailed the man who for many year used to be Johnson Counties Ag person. He moved to Hill County very recently. We're on the Johnson/Hill county line. I sent 3 of the above pictures asking what he thinks it is. I'll post results when he emails me back.

[Hellmanns]

It's fusarium.

[AlittleSalt]

I got the results: It's Verticillium Wilt

Older leaves on verticillium wilt-infected plants begin wilting at
leaf margins and turn yellow, then brown. Plants are stunted and wilting is not
alleviated by watering. A light tan discoloration of the stem can be seen in
cross section.

From what I've read, Verticillium being soil borne explains why the tomato plants only in that raised bed are experiencing this. The tomatoes in two other raised beds are big, green, and healthy looking.

[Bipetual]

That's too bad. I'm glad the others are still doing well.

Although it was not fungus, you may want to do some research on fungicides and keep some on hand or know what kind you would get if you need it. The label on Garden Safe says it's good for black spot, rust, and powdery mildew, which is kind of limited. I don't even know if black spot and rust affect tomatoes. From what I've read on here, organic gardeners tend to stick with copper, which is good for bacterial and fungal diseases, sometimes alternating with sulfur. Daconil is definitely not organic, but works well on early blight and is sometimes alternated with copper. All of the labels are kind of scary to me, but Daconil worked great for me this year with the blight. I like the idea of alternating, though, because it spreads out the risk of too much exposure to one thing.

Some people don't spray at all for early blight. For me, in my climate, I would still get tomatoes before I tried the Daconil, at least on the indeterminates, because the plants keep growing and producing new foliage. With determinates, there was really nothing left to make tomatoes. And even the indeterminates are very sad to look at!

Worth, how do you deal with the tomato plague, as you put it?

[AlittleSalt]

I started removing the boards from around that raised bed this afternoon and found termites. I'm wondering if termites were eating on the tomato plant roots? First picture.

The second picture is a side view of the bed after I removed the boards. That's what I expected it to look like. Got any ideas about termites eating tomato roots?

[Worth1]

Termites do not eat live wood or roots.
They have been known to infest peoples wooden peg legs if they sit around too much.

Worth

[Carriehelene]

Wondering how your plants are doing now Salt?

[Carriehelene]

WTH? Last post on my phone was from worth talking about mowing. Stupid phone. Sorry, read the update now

[AlittleSalt]

We slowly removed the soil and I noticed the tomato roots grew deeper than they usually do here. The dirt level was 12 inches above regular ground level. It was build 2 x 10s sitting on bricks. The roots grew the full 12 inches deep and into the existing soil. I'm thinking this is because of how I watered this bed. I watered every fourth day. From what I have read - that will make roots spread and grow deeper in search of water.

I didn't find any signs of mold or mildew in the soil itself, but there was some on the pine bark. The pine bark is gone now. The soil is in a pile. It smells very earthy and has a nice friable texture. In many threads, I have given advice/shared knowledge about adding oak leaves to sandy loam soil. The pictures below show what the soil looks like about a year after amending soil in this way. I should add that the soil is somewhat wet - not saturated or dry.

After thinking about what happened to the tomato plants in this bed, I think they caught some sort of air-borne problem. I won't call it a disease, it's probably fungal or something near that. We had spring conditions where everything stayed wet/saturated for 2 months - followed by two long periods of extremely dry hot weather and a lot of wind. It makes sense to me that there would be problems caused by those conditions.