Jay,

Too bad the rain mostly missed you, but it is a good thing the hail missed your garden. I should know better than to think it is actually raining at your house just because the radar says it is.

Y'all are getting rain just like we did last year....in tiny amounts that scarcely wet the ground, but still are better than no rain at all.

I have noticed a lot of my tomato plants are starting to struggle in the heat....and not just in terms of heat stress, but also the appearance of various diseases. It seems to be a pretty bad year for tomato diseases.

I've had two that I thought had bacterial wilt, but mostly just Septoria and Early Blight here.

I was already thinking Pith Necrosis even before you said it, but then I remember that it is usually cool nights + high humidity that encourage the Pseudonomas corrugata. Also, I often have plants 'outlive' or 'outlast' pith necrosis if I leave in the ground, so it does not necessarily kill the plants. So, even though you've had somewhat cool nights, no one in their right mind could say you've had high humidity there!

So, if it isn't pith necrosis, how about Southern Blight? Have you ever had plants with it? When I have a sudden wilt accompanied with almost instantaneous plant death without prior yellowing and a slow decline of the foliage, Southern Blight (Sclerotium rolfsii) is often the cause. You would have seen the brown stem cankers that usually completely girdle the stem at or just above soil level. You might have observed a white fungal spore mat on the lesions and even the little tannish-orange sclerotia on the white spore mat and brown lesions. As dry as it has been there, I think maybe your plant wouldn't have had the white spore mat/orange sclerotia.

If you are seeing the brown stem lesions and a white spore mat with black sclerotia instead, it could be Timber Rot.

What else causes brown stem lesions? Let's see.....how about Alternaria canker (Alternaria alternata)? The only thing that makes this less likely is that you'll tend to see symptoms of stem, foliage and fruit, and not only on the stem, although I am not sure if it appears on the stem first or last or if it appears on everything all at once.

So, what else? You can get brown stem lesions on plants that have severe Early Blight (Alternaria solani) but your plants would have looked sickly with EB on foliage for days or weeks before you'd see stem lesions. (At least that's how it progresses in my garden.)

Am I forgetting anything that causes brown lesions on the stems? Oh, Fusariuum Crown Rot (Fusarium oxysporum?). With this one the whole plant browns and dies, but I don't think it is quite as quick as 24 hours, and I think you would have seen yellowing of foliage for at least several days before Fusarium Crown Rot could advance enough to kill a plant.

Jay, I don't know that I have come up with anything you did not already consider. In my garden, it most likely would be Southern Blight that caused such a sudden death, and I don't always see the white spore mat until 2 to 3 days after the plant suddently dies. I don't have a lot of experience with Bacterial Wilt, but I think it would have been apparent for several days before you lost the plant.

I'm not a very good disease detective because when they die I just yank them out, throw them away and replace them with something else. I don't spend a lot of time studying them, so I probably am weak on stem symptoms, and the only stem diseases I see here tend to be Southern Blight or Pith Necrosis. I think this sounds like a case for Craig or Martin or Fusion or maybe someone at the Tomato Forum like Mulio....you need the opinion of one of the "pros", don't you think?

I hope you get some weather relief. Our temps are supposed to be 100+ until at least Wed. so not much hope for improving conditions here.

When you figure out what you think it is, I hope you'll let me know so I can learn from this conversation. Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't spread.

You know, in May and June the tomato plants look darn near perfect and a long, fruitful season beckons. In late June and all of July, the diseases and pests take hold, along with the terrible heat, and the tomato plant decline begins. Some years, I feel like it is July's purpose in life to try to kill every plant I am trying to grow. Any plants that make it to early August probably get cut back to 2 or 3' and given a chance to regrow for fall.

To make it even harder, new diseases keep appearing so you never really figure them all out. (sigh)

Chances of rain here are slim to non-existent and I am keeping my in-ground plants on a 4-day watering schedule, which probably isn't enough, but will have to do. The container plants get watered once or twice a day and have almost no disease issues. It is temping to switch all my tomato plants next year to large containers.

Dawn

Jay, That is unreal. I told my DH last night that it looked like Jay was finally getting rain. We lost our favorite Tulsa news channel last night just as the weather report was starting. By the time we realized it wasn't going to come right back on, we had missed part of the weather report, but with the little that I saw, I was sure hoping that you got rain. That umbrella that hung over Dawn's house last year must have moved to yours. LOL I don't have any rain either, but I sure have plenty of humidity that I would love to share with you.

Dawn I'm like you. Especially with the weather I have enough I usually yank them and sometimes don't worry too much about what it is. Especially if I have a general idea and know that if I spray what I will use should either prevent of control it. In this case it was the only Spudatula I had from Spudleaf's seeds. What you get for only planting one. Also it had good fruit set. And the fact that as I remember one I didn't trim any leaves off of as they looked so healthy. I went out and pulled it and two others I yanked yesterday evening out of the dumpster. And did some more inspecting. There is nothing on the leaves. I found several of the lower stem joints with the brownish red color. If you twist a stem or big branch they split easily. The center white looks dry and separated. The center of the others pulled at the same time looks moist. All 3 were watered at the same time. I would say what hit this one just basically stopped all water and nutrient flow through the stems. The reason I would like to know is so I can prevent it from spreading if that is possible. I sent an email to Martin. If he doesn't have any idea I will post it elsewhere. I feel he will probably know. I know I was told about 3 years ago but haven't seen it since. Jay

Dawn,
I did some more research and checking back on what I experienced two years ago. I'm 99% certain it is Pith Necrosis. That is what I decided two years ago. My memory was trying to trick me. The only one where it really fits. The terms I was trying to think of to explain the appearance of the pith is chamberlike and ladder like. It can be caused by nitrogen being too high. I went and looked and seen a few of the minor signs of it on other plants. I thought I remembered it as being non contagious. If it is on a stem at the most you only lose that stem. My experience was two years ago both that had it on the main stem died. One struggled for a while. That is why I decided you might as well pull them. Some claimed two years ago they have saved those with the main stem damage. I think our winds make that near impossible here. Maybe if you found it early and built soil up and tied them to a support. This was a new area I broke out. So dug holes last fall 20-24 inches deep and filled them in with some manure, cottonseed meal, soybean meal and alfalfa pellets . Was thinking there would be enough time for it too leach out some. Think all were slow enough release types I got too much build up. Also I've seen some signs on the leaves. And maybe another reason I'm just now getting more fruit set. I will water a little more for a week or so and try to wash some on down. I also have had a little problem in the older garden. As I had prepared the holes before my soil test came back saying I didn't need to add anything. I'm not going to add anything to the holes this fall. If I see a need next spring and summer with add something then. I think I've built my soil up enough I'm almost to the point that Ruth Stout talks about. And have found it hard to quit adding at least something. If I decide something else I will add it. Martin sent back and email but everything he could think of this didn't fit. I finally found the site on the pith necrosis where it describes my conditions. I guess it has several symptoms and as this site said not as well researched and documented as other diseases. Jay

Jay,

If it is pith necrosis, then I guess your analysis of too much nitrogen explains why it happened, but I still am surprised you had enough humidity to contribute to it. I was thinking pith necrosis was the best fit, but didn't think your fast-draining soil "could" hold enough nitrogen to cause it. Of course, if you added nitrogen, then I guess it could. I have become so gun-shy about adding nitro because too much certainly seems worse than too little. Also, I suspect your lack of rainfall kept the nitro from leaching out.....not a problem I've had here, with over 27" of rain so far this year (that's six inches more than for all of last year, which makes me positively giddy!).

I do think maybe your soil is at the good stage Ruth Stout often discussed. I think parts of mine are there sometimes, but then the heavy, heavy rains we had in 2007 (May-July, I think) and then in April/May 2009 probably have leached out some nutrients from beds that I thought were almost perfect, so I'll be piling on the amendments in late fall after the plants are done.

Pith necrosis is fairly rare, so you did a good job diagnosing it. I think that the first year I had it, I never figured it out. I did a better job of figuring it out the next time. I don't see it often, so I guess I don't have an excess nitrogen thing going on here....but I haven't amended as heavily as you did last fall. (I wish I had....and maybe I will before next year.)

The absolute hardest thing for me to do since moving here has been to wean myself away from using too much nitrogen, but I think I'm finally there. It is very hard to have excess nitro if gardening entirely organically. And, I am not totally organic, but "mostly" and I do avoid higher-nitro ferts almost all the time, but I'll make an exception when needed. For example, after the 5 weeks of heavy spring rains in April/May flooded my corn patch and stalled the growth, I finally gave the corn plants a side dressing of Ammonium sulfate or nitrate. (I don't remember which.....it was whichever one the farm store in Ardmore had at the time.) The plants, which were exhibiting poor color and poor growth, immediately perked up and grew like mad and produced like crazy. In another thread, I'm going to talk about my experiment with some Bloom Booster type ferts this last month.

Dawn

Dawn,
That is what surprised me as I haven't added anything but organic for the last two years. And only a very small amount for a few years before that. I have seen alfalfa cause some problems if fresh and I did add cottonseed meal and soybean meal which are both fairly high. I added bone meal but no blood meal. And some horse manure and it is a mixture of fresh and old. But on the new area wasn't too concerned. I felt it would be low enough I wouldn't have any problems. Now the old area concerned me from the start. Like I said I had already prepared the holes before I got my soil sample back. I was real high in all three areas. PH was a little high also. But hopefully have that under control. I will scatter the alfalfa thinner this year and also be more frugal with the manure. I cut back to an inch the year before last and besides what I had added to the holes early and also too the corn rows and the garlic rows I refrained from adding any more. So basically I did it organically. Martin said anymore that an inch of manure in my soil type and I'm over fertilizing and that don't take into account the other things i added. I keep telling myself I will prepare holes and if the soil test shows the same will not add anything this fall except to the corn rows. I think my soil got to that point fast than I expected. And also after all these years hard for me not to add something. Jay