Tomato plants!! Help!?
Question:My plants were doing just fine till yesterday.
Some of the bottom leaves had turned yellow druing the past three weeks or so.
Today, all of a sudden most of them are now yellow with black dots.
No signs of bugs nor any bugs eating the leaves.
I have tomatos but have been green for the past four weeks and no sign of turning red. Should I pick them to ripen them?
Thanks for any info you may provide me.
Answers:
You have a very common tomato plant disease called "septoria leafspot". This is a soil borne disease. It infects the plant when soil particles are splashed onto leaves, mostly from watering practices. This disease can lay dormant in soils, year after year, and by you not removing "all" of the soil each year from your pots, you are exposing the new years plants to an old disease. If you are going to use the same pots each year, you need to remove the old soil and wash out the pots with a bleach and warm water mixture, to kill any diseased spores left behind.
You cannot very well treat for this disease at this time, because of fruit present on the plants. But next year you should follow the soil changing procedures and get on a fungicide spray program too. Get the fungicide called Ortho "multi-purpose fungicide" which contains the chemical "Daconil 2787", from any leading garden center like Walmart, Home Depot, or Lowes and treat your young new plants, before they fruit. A couple of applications will keep the leafspot from attacking your tomato plants. As far as your green tomatoes right now, leave them on the vine, and let them ripen naturally. Watch them, however, because the leafspot can attack the fruit somewhat with the same black spots. Hope this answers your question..
http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgard...
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.e...
...Billy Ray
Sounds like grub worms to me. You can treat the groud if that doesn't bother you.
As for picking the tomatoes, I like my tomatoes to ripen on the vine. You may also chech how much water the plants are getting.
if the tomatoes are big enough, you can pick them, and put then in a brown paper bag to ripen. as for the yellow leaves, are they getting to much water, sun?? this will cause the leaves to yellow.. have you ever tried fried green tomatoes? they are sooooo good. we love them in our family.
Yellow leaves with little black spots.. SOunds like you can't rule out an aphid problem as well. take a piece of scotch tap to the bottom side of the leaf and see if you can get the black spots to stick to the tape. If aphids are a problem, you can apply a repellant accourdingly. Green tomatos are normal, give it some time. if you pick them while they are green, when they turn red they will not be as juicy and sweet as you may like. Hope this helps.
It may be Thrips. You could try a vegetable Insecticide/Fungicide Dust.
http://bonide.com/solutions/products/rot...
Go to http://bonide.com/
Plant Problem Solver->Food Crops->Tomato
Good Luck,
-Doug
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