Just when my beloved beautiful heirloom tomato plants have started to think about blooming, there’s something wrong with them! It seems to be mostly on the plants to the left of the garden (so maybe it’s something that spreads), and I don’t see any bugs. The blooming ones are to the right. First I noticed some dry, curled leaves, and now I see that they’ve got dead spots all over them. I cut off the affected foliage - no idea if I was supposed to do that, but I panicked! I looked on the Clemson Extension’s information pages and the only thing that seems like it might be it is maybe septoria leaf spot? Except this started on the top foliage, not the bottom, and the pictures I’ve found don’t really look right.
Here’s a picture I took, which didn’t come out so great - it’s the third picture.
I’d really appreciate anything you guys can tell me about it - what it is, what I can do about it. If I have to I’ll take it down to the county extension, but their hours are really inconvenient with my work schedule, so I was hoping the Dope would come through for me.
It looks more like a mineral deficiency than a disease to me. Color Pictures of Mineral Deficiencies in Tomatoes
It’s hard to tell from your photo, but perhaps that purple color makes me think about phosphoros.
I’m not a smoker, there are no nearby tobacco fields. Could overwatering cause a mineral deficiency? For a while there my drip irrigation timer was malfunctioning and I didn’t realize it, so the plants got a LOT of water as seedlings. Also, we’ve had a lot of rain recently. The soil is “new” and a local mix - everything else is doing amazingly well in it. Should I fertilize? Add something?
I’ve got an organic tomato fertilizer at the ready - they got some when I planted them and it directs to side-dress when they set fruit. I should go ahead and side dress? That won’t interfere with flowering or fruit?
Not if you really have leached out everything from the first application. Going too high on nitrogen likely won’t effect fruiting much this early in the season and I think you’ve good evidence of leaching showing up in your plants. But it’s your call.
This just guarantees half the plants’ll continue to suffer. The objective here is tomatoes, not science.
If the nutrients are leaching, they are going somewhere, perhaps over to the peppers or eggplants you have next to the tomatoes. You don’t want to overfertilize those. I’d just fertilize the obviously affected area. I’ve got a downspout that drains into one corner of my garden, and every year I end up having to fertilize the tomato plant in that corner several times.
Okay, will do. Any idea on how long it should be until I see some results? (Particularly considering I did, in fear and anger, chop off some planty bits?)
A week or two should allow significant improvement. (Of course, I’m totally wrong here, and your plants really are suffering from Southern tobacco rusty wilt mosaic stunt potyvirus…)
::crosses fingers, hopes for best::
I’ll second the phosphoros deficiency idea, flowering plants suck down phosphoros. I’ve noticed that alot of the time deficiency in macro-nutes are caused by having a deficiency in micro-nutes (zinc, magnesium, calcium, boron) since nutrient uptake is usally tied together.
Have you checked your soils ph? Phosphoros will only be absorbed within a certain range. If this is the case some agricultural limestone could be the solution.
It sure looks like Alternaria canker to me which is a fungal problem. It is spread by wind. Wounding (pruning, etc.) of young plants provide excellent entry points for infection. I will say that without a closeup shot of the damage, I cannot be 100% certain.
I found some pictures of that one - the leaves could be my problem, but I don’t have those stem cankers. There is a little bit of stem discoloration on the little itty bitty stems with the leaves on them, but that’s just purple splotching, not like the pictures I saw.