need pictures please.

Both Fusarium and Verticillium are soil-borne.
But you need to ID the problem before you can attempt to fix it.

Are these plants being grown in the soil in the garden or in pots in potting mixes?

10% bleach + water solution for your pots.

Scrub well with water or soap/water getting as much soil as you can off of them, then give them a soak in the 10% bleach solution for a few minutes.

You can eat anything off these infected plants without any harm to yourself...you do want to get this plant material out of your garden, though.

There are very few organic controls for soil fungus worth a damn. There are no good natural drenches...soil solarization is hit/miss (mostly miss)...

Your best bet is choosing resistant varieties and mulching your soil to prevent soil/water splash...but it seems like this isn't an issue since you're using containers and you can just replace the soil.

It is quite odd you may have gotten this from a bagged soil...especially spread across so many plants in such a quick manner. If this is the case there's some bad quality control going on with the batch of soil you bought...or bad storage/handling at the nursery/store you got it from.

Need pictures, please.

will try to get some pics- it seems to have made it to my peppermint plant, which I was pretty sure was going to take over the world despite being kept in a pot... This may be my best shot of getting a picture, since I have pruned A LOT

Thanks for the cleaning advice- I think within the next day or so I will be out there dumping and removing everything that is dead(or dying and not producing any fruit) and isolating contaminated containers

Good to know that I can still eat them!- I have one very lonely, yet apparently healthy tomato left on what once was a ridiculously healthy better boy... I think pruning the heck out of it as it showed signs of the disease helped (plus a ton of hydrogen peroxide after the recent rain) and the suckers are okay so far

I have a sucker that is rooting- I found some spray claiming to help with fungus (claims to be organic?), but looks like just sulfur is the active ingredient. I'll try it out- remembering to take before-and-after pics this time!

And I have a couple cucumber plants that seem to be slightly affected (a couple of leaves with spots I cut off already, and slowed growth) but seem to be producing new fruits and flowers anyways- it was a disease resistant variety given to me by my mother (10yr+ old seeds! didn't think they would germinate...)

Whew! Thanks so much everyone for your help! I am quite a beginner at this- if it's not painfully obvious ;-P

Post pictures before you dump anything. Must have firm diagnosis before apply any sort of treatment, including discarding plants.

Gardening is a live & learn sort of thing. As a newbie,you have a lot to learn. Please allow us more experienced folk help you.

Please post pictures.

http://s1302.photobucket.com/user/amy_davis2/library/Unidentified%20Garden%20Issues

OK- experienced folk! Did the best I could with getting a photo or two of everything affected. A lot of photos, so I went ahead and put the link to the album above.
Have a look if you have a chance- and if you have a diagnosis please let me know- it will be greatly appreciated!!!
I would like to get this all sorted out and at least be able to prevent it in time to plant some cool-weather stuff (I'm in the south- no rush ;-)
THANKS!

Pictures are very small. Show various small leaf spots.

Please post full sized images of entire plants. Possible cultural/environmental problems.

Definitely NOT fusarium.

This post was edited by jean001a on Sat, Jun 15, 13 at 20:28

Corn meal, yes the stuff you cook with, is an excellent treatment for several garden diseases. Texas A&M started to study, or at least notice, the phenomenon in the 1990s on peanut crops. Prior to the use of corn meal, peanut fields had to be rotated into another crop to let the diseases die out. After they started using corn meal they could repeat the peanuts in the same fields season after season. Not sure why, but the research was never competed. Nowadays the TAMU profs are on a campaign to disavow all knowledge of the project, but it lived for over 10 years on their website. During that time the organic community in Texas took off and ran with the idea. I am living proof that it has worked in my garden every year since 2002 when I first tried it. In fact it worked so well that I converted to all organic that year.

For a lawn we apply at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Not sure how that would convert to a potted plant. I'd say a "light dusting" with corn meal and repeat in 3 weeks. I have used a heaping handful under my roses as a fertilizer confident that it is protecting the roses from the typical powdery mildew and black spot.

Corn meal works by attracting the predatory Trichoderma (try koh DER mah) fungus. If there are any mushroom growers on this forum they will testify as to the devastation caused by a trichoderma "infection" in their mushroom crop. The fungus that directly decomposes corn meal initially attracts the trichoderma. The population of trichoderma builds on those other fungi. When the first fungus species are gone, the trichoderma latches onto all the other fungi at the surface to munch on. Those would include the disease.

Corn meal is the most reliable and effective organic solution to fungal disease. I would go farther to say it is more reliable than chemical fungicides and certainly much more organic. Being a biological process, it takes 3 weeks to see the results from corn meal. The disease is stopped fairly quickly, but sustained new growth is really where you see the result.

There's a few thousand strawberry growers in California and about the same amount of tomato growers in Florida that wishes corn meal was that effective on fungal disease.

Hmm... Well, there are always differing opinions about anything, especially with garden tips (being a newbie is rather interesting- everyone has strong, and yet usually opposing views with very valid evidence, about just about everything), as jean001a said: "Gardening is a live & learn sort of thing." Everyone's situation is going to be slightly, or VERY different.

BUT cornmeal is kind of cheap to NOT try.
I mean, the tomato plant has nothing left but suckers, so I don't think I would have anything to lose.

dchall_san_antonio : a light dusting around the base of the plant, then water? or dust over the leaves? I am a newbie, but this is systemic, so I would wonder if the fungicide (of any sort) would have to be applied in a way that would enter the plants' systems.

Also- will try to post more pics, but am having comp. uploading issues (old laptop :-( )
Thank you all so much for your help!