Bev I'm having issues with your lack of posting! I miss you. Where have you been hiding? Please come back!

As for the 'maters...we haven't had any problems, my folks haven't nor have my friends. I'm sure that Norman has ideas on it though.

Jeff

I dunno anything about it. What are the symptoms?

Bev I use a spray with Daconil in it. Bought mine at a farm CO-Op store. Don't think this stuff will cure your problem
but may slow it down until you can get some tomatoes. I
have been lucky this year no blight yet.
Norm

Well, as glad as I am that you aren't dealing with this yet, it sure doesn't help ME out! Arrgg!
TWSV is very distinctive and it is a VIRUS. It shows in NEW growth as opposed to fungus and such starting in old growth. It looks like tiny, tiny dots and splotches of ink on the new leaves and stems. Once the virus is in your plant, even just presenting on one stem of new growth, the whole plant is infected and must be ripped out. Thrips carry the virus and I expect my roses are the main contributers. I have about 100 roses all throughout my landscape including two arbors that really catch the breeze and send the little thrips sailing out all over kingdom come. Just shoot me.

And sorry Jeff, m' dear. I pop in and see you guys from time to time to get a grin and brighten my day, but I don't post anywhere like I used to. I know I would if I ever got the chance to go to one of the swaps, but that's not in the near future as far as I can tell.
If I do find a way to help with this virus, even to slow it down, I will certainly post and give ya'll a "heads up".
Bev

Back when I was a grower in Florida, TSWV was a huge problem on my primary crop, gloxinias. It's spread by the western flower thrip, and this little bugger is very difficult to control. We sprayed a rotation of pesticides, the main two being Mavrik and Avid, the latter of which is mainly a miticide that also offers some thrip protection. Results were mediocre at best. There are newer chemicals on the market for thrip, but I don't think any of them are as effective as one would want, and I'm not sure they're available to the general public anyway. The difficulty in spraying for thrip is that the little devils typically inhabit unopened flower buds where the spray can't reach. Daconil is the bomb for fungal and bacterial tomato and pepper diseases, but won't help with TSWV. In greenhouses growers often use blue sticky cards to monitor thrip populations and trap the flying adults, as thrip are attracted to the color blue. But I wouldn't use such traps in the garden, as you'd unintentionally kill a lot of good guy bugs, too, like aphidiid wasps that kill aphids.

I haven't seen TSWV in my tomato patch, knock wood. But if I do I plan on ordering thrip predator mites (Amblyseius cucumeris). They like thrips for every meal, with the odd spider mite for variety, and I prefer organic solutions to chemical spray regimens anyway. You can get these through most organic providers (Gardens Alive and so forth). I doubt this would completely eradicate a thrip infestation, but you can get a good balance going where the thrip become much less of a problem.

Marty

Thanks for the info, guys!

Does this virus destroy the plant, or just decrease the overall yield, or what? I have had tons of thrips in the past (on the roses), so I suppose my tomatoes are at high risk. I noticed today that at least one of my tomato plants (Mr. America) is supposed to be resistant to this virus -- but I'm sure not all of them are!

Yes, it does destroy the plant. The first year, I had plants loaded with fruit and just decided to learn about the virus by not rouging out the infected plants. I was able to harvest all fruit close to ripening, but the fruit gets effected too, so new fruit was not good. Leaving infected plants encourages the spread. All my plants were in the same section of the garden and most all succombed.
last year, the virus hit just after I started getting ripe cherry tomatoes and within a short period of time, all the plants were infected. Some were not even producing fruit yet.
If I remember correctly, my grape tomatoes were the last to be infected.
Continuous spraying of roses with insecticides brings on spider mites something awful. That's exchanging one problem for another.... Maybe just hitting them when they are flushing would help...

Hmmmm....I'll have to keep an eye out for this!

As for spraying -- I never spray anything for anything, so that's not a problem here! LOL!