Ana,
Funny you should post this! The plants you gave me (3) are doing fine in pots but I noticed this morning one of them has the same curled leaves! I thought it was something I did.
Maybe someone has the answer.
Maybe the humidity -
Hester
The good news is that one has a blossom! and the justicas are growing like mad.
Hope you are staying cool - I'm in for the day!

Hi Anna

When any disease is noticed early on like you just did, you can probably sterilize some pruners and cut where is the problem, spray with the same solution we use for disease and bugs and check back again. Does it look like in the pictures below of the cucumber mossaic virus? maybe was transmitted by some small insect? I hope that you get hold of the problem and get some nice tomatoes.

Hi Hester, I hope that you get some nice tomatoes too.

Silvia

Here is a link that might be useful: tomato leaf diseases

Oh, Hester, I'm sorry if I gave you a diseased plant. I did not see anything at the time. I have another friend I shared plants with who says one of hers has a similar thing going on.

Silvia, it does look a lot like the picture of the cucumber mosaic virus. I am so afraid the other tomatoes will get the same thing! I think I'm going to pull them and throw them away. Even if I have fewer plants, maybe the others will stay healthy. I'm also sad that I saw a very few aphids on my eggplant today. I have not noticed any on the tomatoes, but maybe I didn't look hard enough. How am I ever going to prevent other things from getting sick? I don't have time to be spraying the plants with water every morning to get the aphids off, and I'm sure there must be more around waiting to do the same to my healthy plants.

Silvia, how do you prevent this in your garden? Any tips?
Thank-you so much for diagnosing this for me. Do you really think if I cut the affected portions away the plants should be ok?

Anna

Anna, to be on the safe side I would start another batch of tomatoes, you have a long season ahead of you. Tomato plants are like people sometimes, under the same circumstance one will get sick and other not. It is good to have plants at different growth levels anyway, in case something happens. That is the reason I always start a lot of plants besides I start for other people. The eggplant should be fine, they are hardier than the tomatoes.

Here are some of the tips I have:
-Water almost before wilts, it is better that they get a little bit dry before watering again.
-Go easy on the high nitrogen fertilizer, apply very sparingly and when apply, use a very diluted amounts, almost drops for a seedling, for a plant a little bit more
-When I see aphids on plants that are prone to fungal disease like tomatoes, I don't wash them with the hose but I spray them with pyrethrin spray like pyola, I use it in combination with the other sprays that I use. If you have neem, you can use that again very small amounts.
- When the seedlings are growing, anything that I don't like it gets thrown away, better that than deal with a sickly plant.
- The transition to the garden is being watch, only the strong ones get put out, the weaker are kept in morning sun, afternoon shade.

Tomato plants today, these are the strong ones put out in the garden, one I have it with a little shade because it was showing some wilt with the sun.

And the rest of the plants in various stage growth, Anna you have time, you can start again and be successful, if I am missing anything let me know.

Silvia

Anna, I Silvia's other post I remarked I thought you were too early with all the veggies for where you live....

Silvia, thank-you so much for your well-thought out response. Out of my 18 plants, 8 are sick. I will throw them out tomorrow and hope no more get sick. I looked at them carefully a couple of hours ago and saw not one aphid on any tomatoes. However, a few days ago I saw a stink bug on one. Maybe he was the villain? There are ants on my eggplant. I've heard mixed reports on whether they bring the aphids, or whether the aphids bring the ants (because they create the juicy stuff). I have lots of ladybug larva on the eggplant, so I don't really want to spray them. Would it work to put a little borax around the pot where the ants might have to crawl on it?

I will pay attention to all your tips, and hopefully no more will get sick. All the seedlings had looked great, so I didn't suspect anything.

I don't know if I have the energy to start over. Maybe a few. Maybe I'll see if I find any at the nursery center that I like. Sometimes they have beefmaster there.

Thanks again, Silvia!

Tom, I did not see your post before. I must've been posting at the same time. Do you think they got sick because it was too early? Are they more likely to get viruses now? I had no problems last year at this time. What has been your experience? Have you had virus on yours? If so, what did you do?

It seems that Orlando, where Silvia lives is probably even hotter. I guess I don't understand why we would be prone to more viruses than in her area.

Anna

I'm not much of a veg. grower but I didn't think you should plant 2 to a pot? Any Ideas on this?

We're too hot and humid now, I've even got to watch seedlings closely as they are very susceptible to pests and diseases, that's why I frequently don't set the garden until 9/15 although the optimal time here is 9/1. It really boils down to if were getting too much rain and if the storms are coming off Africa one after the other....Silvia can start 2-4 weeks earlier than I can, just like my FIL in Okeechobee, although he's farther south it's so much cooler there at night.

At the very least you'll be able to restart beans, cukes and squash from seed when we cool down and dry out a little more, in a month or so. Find some Beefmaster seedlings and pot them up now but hold off at least 2-3 weeks before the final set.

Tom

It seems that Orlando, where Silvia lives is probably even hotter. I guess I don't understand why we would be prone to more viruses than in her area.

They have a cooling off period overnight that we don't have right now....

Interesting, Tom. I read your posts this morning as I was having my morning coffee. It prompted me to look up the 10-day forecast on the Weather Channel for each of our sites:

At about 7:30 am

St. Pete- 81
Sarasota- 78
Oakland-77

The 10-day forecast highs/lows:

St. Pete- Highs- 87-88 temperature differential- 5-8 degrees
Lows- 80-82

Sarasota- Highs- 89-90 temperature differential- 9-13 degree
Lows- 77-80

Oakland- Highs- 90-92 temperature differential-13-15 degre
Lows- 75-77

Of course, there could be microclimates where we live also. It seems you are definitely warmest at night and have a much lower temperature differential. I am in-between, but a little closer to the Oakland temperatures than I am to you. It could be that the temperature differential is the most important figure to see (differences between highs and lows in a given day).

Today I'm going to throw out the 8 plants that look affected, and am going to call my nursery to ask what they have. I may buy some seedlings if they have beefmaster (3 of those plants will be pulled), and may plant a few seeds as well. My cukes and squash are just germinating and look ok so far so I will wait.

Thanks for prompting me to look up the forecasts. That was very interesting and it makes sense now. I have been following Silvia's planting times, or lagging a bit behind, so I'm not that off what I should be doing, I think. I think being in close proximity to my neighbor's extremely weedy backyard is what got my plants- likely to be the source of my bugs/aphids.

Anna

I had a virus last season and it is horrible. Throw those all out. You have time to start over. It is much more heartbreaking when they develop the virus when fully grown. There are a whole bunch of viruses it could be and sometimes it is hard to tell exactly which one it is.

FWIW, insects can be disease vectors - that is, a sucking insect can transmit disease to a healthy plant when it feeds. I think this is 1 reason why things may do better @ different times of the year - many pests are more active during hot weather.

& some sucking insects may be so small, you do not see them easily - like those tiny green thrips, or if they fly, they feed & then move on, leaving the disease behind.

It was so hot today in my neck of the woods that I felt like making a poem with Hester,lol.
Willy said the other day hearing the forecast that we were hotter than Miami. And I know that when we came back from Jamaica we were hotter here.
But Anna, having a yard next to yours that is not taken care, that for sure will bring problems. Last year I had a neighbor doing tomatoes and not taken care of the bugs and I had so many stinkbugs, this year he did not do any plantings and I had not big problems, once in a while I see them but is easy to keep control when just a few. And I also notice that their favorite tomato was the black cherry, I don't know why, but this season I did not planted them just in case.
You have a good plan getting the seedlings from a nursery you trust, and I am also worried about the next week tomato planting at the community gardens, I will keep you posted and hope they survive...

Silvia

Amberroses, it's really frustrating, isn't it? I nurtured those babies for so long and they looked great until now. I ended up pulling 6 and am closely watching two more. It hurt to pull up two black cherries that had started setting fruit- just a few, but I was very excited.

Carol, I suspect it must have been stink bugs? I looked so closely at all the plants and did not see any thrips or aphids. Of course, like you said, they might be too small for me to appreciate.

Silvia, lol, I've had fun looking at Hester's thread too! I've experienced all those things, but am not creative enough to come up with something new and clever. Interesting that you noted the stink bugs liked the black cherries best. I pulled two of those today. I have two more that still look great and healthy. It would be hard for me not to grow them as they are my favorite and my daughter's too! I'm hoping the others don't get sick.

My nursery did not have any tomatoes I wanted. They will eventually have beefmaster, but I don't know how long it will take. I will keep looking, but if not, I'd be happy with the ones I have left as long as they remain healthy. Live and learn- every season I learn more! Maybe next year I'll follow Tom's advice and start at least a week or two later. Thanks, everyone.

Anna

Anna

I really really hope it's not whitefly which has caused me to stop growing tomatoes for a couple years now. Seedlings become withered and the ones that make it to maturity do not bear good fruit.

I recently tried again with some cherries (Black and Dr. C's) and again they showed whitefly infection. This is an insect borne disease not seed-carried and the whiteflies live in many many type plants.

I hope yours is something more benign than this.

Denise

y'all are so far ahead of me, simply because there's no point in planting anything down here in 10B right now. But one thing I did a couple years ago that might help you salvage things: I had whitefly and subsequently got TYCLV. Had to rip a lot out. But I salvaged a couple nice big unaffected branches of my favorite, a Cherokee Purple I just loved. I cut them above the affected part of the plant. I rooted them in low light in the garage and planted them several weeks later. We ate some lovely Cherokee purples later.
Just a hopeful idea.

Denise and natives and veggies- I haven't see any whiteflies on anything. Last year I had some (not a lot) on my collards at the end of their season. I decided not to do collards this year but will have other greens. I don't know what the vector was, but the only thing I've seen on the tomatoes is the stink bug. I have eggplant with a few aphids, so that is possible, but I haven't seen them on the tomatoes- even after looking carefully at all of them. I also haven't seen thrips, although maybe I could've missed them if they were particularly tiny? Denise that sounds heartbreaking! Keep trying and maybe you'll get some unaffected plants. N and V- that approach sounds very interesting. These plants are not that big yet, so there aren't any big branches to cut off, just small sucker type things. I'm glad you were able to have success with your salvage.

Anyway, I think the remaining plants look healthy so far, with the exception of two that have a little something going on in the new growth. I am watching them daily and ready to pull them if they get worse.

Anna