What causes tomato leaf curl, and is it treatable?
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Curled leaves are sometimes indicative of the "Curly-Top virus" or the "Tomato Mosaic virus". With time, you should be able to tell whether you have one of these or not.
Tomatoes get a temporary disorder that can cause their leaves to curl upward.which is caused by irregular irrigation. Fruiting shouldn't be affected and once regular irrigation is restored, the curled leaves should disappear.
Some varieties are more prone to getting curly leaves than others. The "Big-Boy" variety tends to display leaf-roll symptoms moreso than others...especially after lots of rain or overwatering.
Other varieties will have their lower leaves curl upward when the soil remains wet for too long. AND other varieties will do the same thing when they've been exposed to too much sunlight.due to the accumulation of too many carbohydrates in their leaves.
Water in the mornings.(do not overhead water) and fertilize sparingly.
Hope this you can use this information to help identify/solve your problem. GOOD LUCK!
-Certified Professional Crop Consultant with over 30 years of experience and a Degree in Plant Science
Most likely spider mites. Get some Ortho bug spray for plants and vegetables. I just sprayed mine Tuesday. They had the same problem. They are perking back up now.
There is a disease called Curly Top, which can be carried to tomato, pepper, and other nightshade plants by the beet leafhopper. It causes the top leaves on the plant to curl up, also distorting the growth of the plant, in general. The victim will most often either fail to produce fruit, or produce only a small amount of sickly fruit.
This disease is incurable. The best thing to do is probably to remove the plant entirely, so leafhoppers do not carry the disease even more readily from that plant to its neighbors.
The way to prevent curly top is to surround your tomato plant with companion plants that repel or distract beet leafhoppers. Marigolds, for example, repell them (and several other pest insects, its roots even produce chemicals that repress certain weeds), while geraniums and petunias serve as trap crops; the leafhoppers will eat those and leave nearby tomato plants relatively alone.
Also, avoid planting tomatoes in the same place more than one year in a row, if convenient. While you can often plant them in the same place with good results, there's a better chance of diseases being carried from year to year.
Another way to reduce the spread of diseases and pests in a garden is to intercrop; instead of solid rows of a single kind of plant, mix the crops together, so that a disease or pest can't move down the line from one plant to the next of the same type.
Tomatoes can be mixed with lettuce, onions, basil, carrots and oregano to intercrop. The onions, basil, and oregano even benefit the tomato's flavor, and repel some insects. Carrots may actually increase tomato fruit production. Never plant tomatoes mixed with brassica plants (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kholrabi, and cabbage, all of which are the very same species), nor with beans or peas. They don't grow well, together.
You can mix tomato plants with pepper plants and eggplants, but they fall victim to many of the same problems, so it only has minimal benefit, for example the pepper plants grow better with the shade and humidity the bigger, less fragile tomato plants provide.
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