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Something looks wrong w/Red Brandywine

16 years ago

My Red BW has been doing well, although it's in a raised bed which doesn't get as much sun as it would like. It has some greenies on it. The raised beds are filled with compost and soil, mulched with straw and fertilized initially with TomatoTone and then recently with some pellet fertilizer. I rarely water it.

The newer leaves on my Red BW have started curling. None of my other tomato plants (different varieties) have this leaf curling problem even though their leaves are right next to each other (touching in some cases). These other tomato plants are in another bed which is separated by a wood beam. All else is the same except they are mulched with dried leaves.

I saw a green bug on one of the leaves, but other than a few brown spots on some older leaves, nothing seems unusual. I haven't used any herbicide and I doubt the neighbors have either because the plants next to it are not curling.

Any ideas what the problem is and whether it's contagious? I don't want an infected plant near my other ones, and if I need to yank it, I want to do it asap. Thanks.

Curled Leaves

Single young leaf close up

Mature leaf brown spot

The bug I saw on leaf (it's green and on the leaf above the bottom one):

Comments (8)

  • 16 years ago

    It's not the bug, it's either herbicide damage or cucumber mosaic virus. If you or one of your neighbors was spraying weedkiller and your plant was downwind then even the slightest unseen drift could do this to your tomatoes. I forget the specific chemical that causes this type of damage but someone else here could tell you the details. Hope it's weed killer and not CMV, that would be a worse problem.

  • 16 years ago

    My experience with weed killer looks like that and with the leaf being stiff, like dried leather, no longer soft and flexible. Can take weeks to show up.

  • 16 years ago

    Weird, I have a Black Krim that has some leaves that look like yours, especially the young ones that are sort of curly around the edges, but without the leaf roll. Other than a few weird looking leaves the plant is plugging along beautifully, is around 7' tall now, and has ~50 tomatoes on it. I originally thought someone may have been spraying something, since my next door neighbor has a nice lawn in back (which is right next to my front yard - weird configuration of houses...), and lots of ornamentals that he's always tending to, but none of the plants seem to be adversely affected, so I haven't given it much thought.

  • 16 years ago

    Out of 17 plants I have 4 that developed leaves like the ones you pictured. Usually all of my plants get them around the third week of June. My plants all grew out of the condition and now the new leaves are normal looking again and they are setting fruit like crazy. I don't know what it is but I have learned to ignore it here. Get leaves like that every year for the past 5 or so and have not lost a plant yet. I gave up on trying to figure out what it is. I would say to just let them grow. Just my $.02.

  • 16 years ago

    My Principe Borghese is doing this also. Some have suggested aphids (I am not seeing them though) and heat stress due to the heatwave we have had recently.

    I am just leaving it as is for now. It is still busy setting fruit etc so until something else happens or if it gets worse, I am TRYING not to worry about it too much lol. Easier said than done...I am stalking my plants to the point of being a bit OCD lol.

  • 16 years ago

    My money is on 2,4-D, the herbicide that catman mentioned. It's definitely got a growth disruptor somewhere, but that's not classic CMV shoestring (yet, anyway).

    2,4-D is found in many types of lawn fertilizers, any sort of weed&feed product. Some people have gotten it on their tomatoes by using grass clippings to mulch their beds, or by composting grass clippings and then using the compost that year (or the following year, if the lawn was mowed in the fall). It's quite persistent, and takes a long time to break down even in compost... tomatoes are the most susceptible vegetable I know of to that particular chemical, and can pick up even traces of it. Fortunately, if there isn't much, they grow out of it with only a momentary pause.

    --Alison

  • 16 years ago

    Definitely classic signs of 2,4-D. The plants "can" grow out of this condition but don't hold me to that.

  • 16 years ago

    Update: the leaves are still doing the same thing, but the plants around it remain 'normal.' And I picked my first Red Brandywine tomato today. It has a day or two to go to completely ripen, but it was cracking at the stem and I wanted it inside rather than on the plant. Can't wait to eat it! Keeping fingers crossed that the plant doesn't have CMV.

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