Do I need to remove the tomato roots, too? Or can I just sheer off the diseased plants at ground level?

Bon, Slow down, my friend, and give me time to talk you down off the ledge, okay?

Are you 100% sure you have Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus? I'm not. In this wet year, there are several active diseases present on my tomatoes that could mimic the early stages of TSWV, but none of them is TSWV. I bet your tomatoes have something else, and my best guess would be Septoria Leaf Spot. They also might have something like Bacterial Spot or Bacterial Speck. They might even have Alternaria Canker, although its blotches on leaves aren't small enough normally to be confused with Tomato Spotted Wilt. Undoubtedly your should expect that at least some of your plants have Early Blight. Are you seeing symptoms only on foliage or on fruit as well? In my garden, Septoria Leaf Spot is much more prevalent than Early Blight this year. So, don't freak out and start removing plants just yet,

There is no such thing as a disease-free garden. Plant diseases are a part of the environment and even commercial growers who use some heavy-duty systemic products rarely have fields that are disease-free. The best you can hope for is to use good sanitation practices during the growing season and then do a top-notch clean-up after the garden season each year as well. It is especially important to remove all damaged foliage and dispose of it. Compost it only if you do hot composting with a pile that reaches high enough internal temperatures to kill any disease pathogens. Normally, for example, I leave all my mulch on the ground and let it decompose in place and then I shovel that compost up into the raised beds in winter. Due to all the disease present this year, I won't do that. I'll remove all the mulch and decompose it in a hot compost pile to prevent this year's diseases from making a quick and early return next year.

To fight disease, I remove all diseased leaves from the plants. Sometimes I spray with Daconil or a copper spray. It depends on what disease is present and it depends on the weather conditions. By mid-summer, if there are plants with what I consider a bad disease problem, I yank out the plants, but not until I've gotten all the fruit that's a decent size at least harvested at the breaker stage. I don't want to lose fruit that's about to ripen. I will yank out plants that only have very small fruit if I think the plant is likely to die before those fruits can enlarge and ripen.

When moving from one plant to another, I wash or wipe off my hands and pruners before touching a new plant. You do this to prevent the spread of disease. This disinfectant used is your choice. I generally have two packages of wipes in my garden tool bucket---bleach wipes for my tools and Wet Ones or something similar for my hands. To me, using the wipes is preferable, although you can use a water/bleach solution in a bucket. It is just that when you use a bucket of solution in that way, the odds that you are going to drop some of it onto your clothes and ruin them is likely. You can cut off the plant at ground level and leave the roots in the ground to decay only if you are sure you're dealing with a disease that doesn't stay in the roots. I keep it simple by pulling out the plants root and all. When removing a plant with one of the wilt diseases, it is imperative to remove the roots.

Most of my tomato plants have Septoria leaf spot to some degree---at least 70 plants have it, while about another 30 or so do not. I haven't let it get too me. I'm still harvesting tons of tomatoes. I'd like to say I have carefully removed all the affected foliage and have sprayed the plants with a product labeled for use on tomato plants with Septoria leaf spot, but I haven't. Instead, I have looked at the plants and said "You poor things. Hurry up and ripen those big tomatoes so I can yank you out of the ground. I've already planted fall tomato plants to replace you." So far, I've only removed 4 plants, although there's another 4 to 6 I'll yank out in the next week, just as soon as the large tomatoes on them breaks color.

Now, if you can convince me that your plants have TSWV, some advice would change. Do you see TSWV symptoms on your fruit or do you at least see damage you think might be TSWV on your fruit? If so, first rule out other diseases and also rule out stink bug damage. A tomato fruit with a ton of stink bug damage can mimic TSWV's early fruit symptoms and this is particularly true with relatively new gardeners who haven't seen a lot of stink bug damage on fruit previously. The stink bugs are pretty bad down here this year, and as a result, I've had some pretty ugly fruit.

I'm a life-long gardener and have only had TSWV show up in my garden one time on one plant, and it was so long ago (pre-internet) that I had no idea what it was until many years later when I saw a photo of a tomato fruit with TSWV damage . I don't remember if I yanked out the plant or left it, but either way, the disease did not spread and I haven't seen it since then. So, let's not jump to the conclusion that you're seeing TSWV damage on your plants when it might be something else.

Dawn

Yeah, it's really nasty. i didn't know it until the cherokee purple tomato started to ripen, because the others were turning sun scalded (from these neglected tomato plants out there.) They had that ugly mottling of colors but worse than the pictures of stink bug damage. The big ugly tomatoes were bad, but they showed healed peck holes where bugs had been. Now, the black cherry tomatoes showed the same mottled colors, but no bug holes. (I threw all away.) I haven't even bothered looking close at the leaves, because I need to pull those plants and revert the site to a yard. I'll trash the plants. Even so I can see the lower portion looks nasty. What a nasty mess! No matter what it is, it's cause to tighten up the hygiene.

I notice the septoria on a few tomato plants, including in the new garden bed but it's not harming anything.

Usually TSWV shows up first, and heavily, on the leaves. It is much heavier than any case of Septoria Leaf Spot I've ever seen. When it hits the fruit, they are not only discolored and mottled, but also lumpy.

Regarding stink bug damage, I have had some tomatoes this year where the whole tomato is wall to wall stink bug 'stings' with the mottling literally covering the whole surface of the tomatoes. They look hideous---almost as bad as tomatoes with Spotted Wilt damage. It isn't like that on all the fruit, but is that way on some of it. Other fruit (sometimes just a few inches away from the badly damaged ones) have no damage from stinkbugs, and others only have a couple of little cloudy spots. Leaf-footed bugs do similar damage, but I killed those in May when they first showed up and haven't seen but one or two since then.

When the lower portion of the plant looks bad and the problem is moving up the plant, that's often either a fungal or bacterial thing. In a wet year like this, it is very common.

Even tomato plants that look like crap still can produce wonderful tomatoes, so don't cut your harvest short by removing plants that still will give you good fruit.

I've been fighting the stink bugs as much as possible by snipping them in half with scissors as I walk through the garden. I just reach out when I see a stink bug on a tomato and snip it in half before it even knows what hit it. They don't seem to run from the scissors as quickly as they flee when they see a human hand (gloved) reaching for them to squish them. I can wipe out a dozen or two every morning in the blink of an eye, and the amount of damage on the tomatoes is falling now that I'm focusing on killing the stinkbugs.

If you look at the photos on the page I've linked below, you can see why stink bug damage (particularly if widespread and severe) could be mistaken for TSWV damage. The tomatoes I have picked this week have had much less stink bug damage than the ones harvested prior to that, so either I'm making progress in killing off the stink bugs or something else is going on.

Dawn

UCDavis-Images of Damage to Tomato Fruit

I was very disappointed. My sole cherokee purple was as big as my hand. :( Thanks to your lessons, I'm not devastated. I'll move on and be clean. I didn't pull all those plants, today. They're isolated and since I cannot be positive, I'll let them be and see what the next ones turn into.

It will be okay. You know, you could take a cutting from a healthy portion of CP (or any other variety), root it and plant it and have a fresh, new healthy plant for fall. I usually take cuttings in mid summer from the uppermost part of the plant because the diseases that move from the bottom upward haven't made it that high yet.

One reason fresh new plants from fall produce so much better than those that have been in the ground all summer long is that they haven't gone through all the summer disease-, heat- and insect-related stress.

Dawn

`omg dawn. I forgot all about this! I'm going right now to take some cuttings. Yay!

That's why I am here, Bon, to serve as your gardening enabler. Yay yay yay!

Dawn will you give me a lesson in taking cuttings. Where, how long ,how many leaves. Can I do it now? I'd love to try!! Thanks.

Sure Sorie, it is simple.

Cut off 5-6" long pieces of suckers. Stick 2-3" of each sucker into (a) a styrofoam or plastic cup (punch holes for drainage) filled with a sterile, soil-less growing medium; or (b) a glass of water (multiple suckers per glass are fine); or (c) directly into the ground (this works, but not as well in very hot weather in full sun in our climate).

Keep the growing medium in the cup or in the ground evenly moist. Cuttings may wilt during the heat of the day but will recover at night. Keep soil moist but never sopping wet.

In a couple of weeks, you'll have new plants.

Note: In the hot weather we're having now, I wouldn't root directly into ground that is in full sun from sunup to sundown. I'd root into cups of soil left in the shade for the first 4 or 5 days. Or, I'd root into canning jars of water indoors. If you use this method, you have to harden off the rooted cuttings to more sunlight and heat the same way you harden off plants raised indoors.

Note #2: Plants rooted in water are often slower to get going once transplanted into the ground or into a soil-less medium in containers. This is because roots in water take up nutrients differently than those grown in soil or a soil-less medium, so once the plants rooting in water have formed roots, transfer them asap to soil or a soil-less growing medium so they can begin to make that transition.

Your cloned plants will grow for the rest of the summer. After they reach the right size, they'll begin to flower. Once late summer or early autumn temperatures drop to the right range, the flowers will form fruits.

It is the easiest thing in the world.

Thank you. I'm going to try it with the Celebrity! I think the mortgage lifter, black krim and park's whopper are going to make it. Yeah!!!!! I've been trimming off the dead and cleaning fertilizing again and watering!! Time will tell!

thanks again and Bon sorry I high jacked your post!!!

You're welcome.

A member of this forum who hasn't posted in quite a while used to take cuttings in fall and keep them going all winter (I don't remember if they were indoors or if he had a greenhouse) and either plant them in the ground in the spring, or he took new cuttings from the overwintered plants and planted them in spring. The last time he posted about it, I think he'd been rooting cuttings/clones of the original mother plant for 4 or 5 years. It may have been the variety Big Beef, but ought to work with any variety that has decent disease tolerance.

sorie, I never mind hijacks. I like conversations.

I'm so impressed that you can tell the difference in the different tomato problems. I just know mine look bad, but aren't dead. I can't tell what problem they're having. They haven't set any fruit, other than one who had a couple before the May rain. I've looked at pictures online and the diseases all look the same to me.

The plants are growing, just not quickly and not making fruit...and look bad. Other than the cherry tomatoes--they're doing fine but the skin seems tough. Flavor is good though.

Dawn you are the best gardening enabler. Between you and Dick Raymond I have been actively addicted for 4 years now!

Hazel, Identifying tomato problems by photo is hard. What you learn over time is how the different issues develop and progress and that helps you to understand what is going on.

When I look at a photo of someone else's tomato plant that I've never seen before, it often is hard for me to figure out what is going on because that photo is, literally, from one day out of the life of a plant that might easily live 180 days or more, from the day the seed sprouts to the day the plant dies or is removed from the garden by the gardener. When I'm looking at a plant in my own garden, I have more than that one-day's image---I have seen the plant day after day after day and know exactly when it started looking bad and what the weather was like and so on and I also know how the problem has developed and progressed over a period of time. It makes a huge difference. I also know what issues I routinely see here. I do not routinely see Septoria Leaf Spot. The last year that it was a big issue in my garden was in 2008, but because I have seen it before, I knew what it was this year when it began popping up. That's just the sort of knowledge/experience you accumulate over time and I haven't found that looking at all the photos of diseases online ever has helped me nearly as much as seeing it in real life.

Of course, in a year like this, diseases are running rampant because of all the rain and humidity and often you have 2, 3 or more things going on all at once. That makes disease diagnosis difficult because so much is going on at the same time.

Sometimes you really don't have to even know what the disease is-----all you really have to know is what it is not. As long as it is not one of the bad diseases that can wipe out a garden, you usually can tolerate a whole lot of ugly foliage on a plant in order to keep getting fruit.

Tough skin is a trait found on many bite-sized tomatoes, and particularly on hybrid ones. I don't grow many hybrid bite-sized tomatoes for that reason. So, to some extent, you can limit the tough skin issue just by the varieties you choose. Juliet is a great example of a tough-skinned grape-shaped tomato that produces like mad. People choose it because it is a heavy producer, but my take on it is that I don't like its tough skin so growing it here in my garden is pointless as I don't want to eat tomatoes with tough skin. Often, though, it seems to me that the heat may play a role in tomatoes having tough skin because it often seems like the skin gets tougher in July and August than it was previously.

If you can keep your plants healthy, they should produce in fall. I imagine that the larger-fruited plants are not producing now even if they are flowering because the temperature is too hot for fruitset, and the high relative humidity values also play a role in poor fruit set in high temperatures. I can get great fruit set on slicing/ beefsteak tomatoes even in high temperatures in a drought year because the humidity often is exceptionally low. Give me the exact same temperatures in a year with high humidity and fruit set doesn't happen. The only solution is autumn's cooler temperatures.

Kim, lol. Dick and I are doing the best we can to get you addicted and to keep you that way. I've been rereading some of his books this summer to amuse myself when it is too hot to go outside. You cannot beat his books for good, basic gardening know-how, even though he gardened in a climate very different from ours.

Dawn

My first gardening book was an old dilapidated copy from the little library in Quitaque. I had no AC so I would go there and visit the librarian and I picked up The Joy of Gardening. I kept it so long she told me she'd call me if anyone ever wanted to check it out. Well I needed some joy for sure and that's how I fell in love with gardening. Some of his ideas work well anywhere but some not here. Its all trial and error and every year is a new experience. I finally got my own copy. Since I came from a background of no gardening it was a good basic light your fire for gardening and putting food up.

I didn't garden much until my late twenties. Then my first experience was with roses, I could have picked something a little easier. I put those two poor roses in a shaded area and since it was decidious the roses bloomed and looked really nice until the tree leafed out. I could not understand why they looked so bad all summer,,HA

the elderly lady next door needed help in her yard so I would take my baby girl and go help her. What a beautiful person she was. I learned so much from her. I look back and all my mess ups must have drove her crazy but she would just explain why I needed to this instead of that so calm and reassuring. Gardening and life in general I guess. I owe it all to her. I spoke at her funeral thru tears and laughter I tried to tell everyone what a mentor she was but no words could tell all she had taught me.

i did finally move those poor roses and they did just fine. I don't know what shape I would be in if gardening had not been introduced to me. I can put my hands in dirt and the whole world lightens up, I know,that sound like a platitude but it is the honest to gods truth. You donot need a large complicated garden either just a few pots will brighten your world.

"I can put my hands in dirt and the whole world lightens up"

That'sthe deal, right there. I tell ya. Good stuff.

stockergal, I totally agree with everything you said about gardening.

People who do not garden do not understand the way that gardening is so much more than just the planting, weeding, watering, harvesting and eating. It is a mystical process that connects a gardener's body and soul to the natural world and to the cycle of life in a manner that transcends words.

People who think that our gardens are our hobbies are wrong, or at least in my case they are wrong. Gardening isn't my hobby, it is my chosen lifestyle and it involves being intimately connected to the natural world---not just the soil and the rain and the plants, but all the living things, flora and fauna, and all the cycles in this world---daily, monthly, seasonal, annual, etc. For me, gardening is about so much more than the garden itself.

The important thing for me isn't that our garden feeds our bodies. It is that gardening feeds my soul.

Dawn

Lit me tell you a little story. Did you guys hear about the shooting at the Norman Regional Healthplex on Friday afternoon? Well I was there in the parking lot at the time of the shooting. yes and I had my daughter and grandson with me. We had just came from his pediatrician and was walking out to our trucks. We heard the first shots, I turned to my daughter and said "those were gun shots". I was terrified and had no idea where the shooter was. We saw it all. I knew we had to get out of there, So we crawled back toward the hospital, made it in side. They locked down the hospital. As soon as they're knew the situation and that the shooter was in the emergency room dying, we headed back out to the parking lot, but it was a while before we could leave because we were only TWO parking spaces down from the shooting. That's how close we were to death on Friday. Now the whole incident probably took 5 minutes. But those were the longest minutes of my life. I have never lied to my grandson but I looked him right in the eye and told him it was just a bad traffic accident and when the police were finished we could go home. I don't know how much he understood he just knew sonething was wrong.

i came home spent the evening with the people,animals and plants that I love, and the little stuff no longer mattered. I have never experienced anything like it, all I could think of was now days the gunman wants to take as many with him as he can. Thank goodness it was not that kink of shooting.

hows that for a quite Friday?

Good grief! I'm glad you're okay! What a week for you.

Thanks for carrying. I always appreciate people who carry. I cannot. I'm not a felon or anything, but I haven't enough physical control and coordination. My husband is a rifle man.. marksman upward to a mile, I think.

I am just glad that you, your daughter and your grandson were not harmed. (I realize there would be some emotional trauma after witnessing something like that.) I saw a story on the morning news about the shooting and was just so mad that the shooter took the life of an innocent person. My heart goes out to both their families and all their friends. I am sure he left so much grief and sorrow in the wake of this horrible incident that we probably cannot even imagine it. You know, he hurt his own family and friends as much as he hurt hers. What goes through the mind of a person who chooses to do something like this is beyond my comprehension. Thankfully he did not decide to randomly shoot strangers.

Stockergal, I think your are a very strong woman. You survived a very dangerous situation, kept your wits about you and y'all made it safely indoors. That is what matters. I do agree that an incident like that reminds us all "don't sweat the small stuff".

As for lying to your grandson, I think you get a pass on the "lying". I believe you did the right thing to protect him from possible emotional/psychological trauma considering he is only 3 years old.

I agree we are never prepared for something like that to happen within our sight or hearing. It is hard to know what to do when faced with something like that, but I think in this case it is a good thing you forgot about your gun. Assuming he only fired 2 shots, the situation was over quickly and it was more important for y'all to be safe than for you to challenge him with your gun. If you'd had your gun right there on your person and aimed it at him, he might have turned his gun on your and your family before he shot himself.

You have had such an eventful week. I hope next week is just as dull and quiet as it can be.

Dawn

now that I know the story, I agree Dawn the gun would have been a mistake. Maybe that was a little divine intervention. My grandson is still asking questions, I just stick to my story. He is so bright I know he knows there's more to it but just to young to comprehend. Last night before I went to bed I got the shakes so bad, I guess time will ease all.

It seems kind of a strong reaction with only a few shots ( there were 5 not 2 news media got that wrong) but it was terrifying non the less.

Please, next week be boring and uneventful'!!!!

I agree with everything Dawn and Bon said. I hope this week is especially boring and quiet for you.

stockergal, Kids are so smart nowadays, but I hope that we can keep the little ones as innocent as possible for as long as possible, notwithstanding the fact that you do have to teach them all about stranger danger at a very young age. All too soon, he'll be older and will become aware that there's a lot of evil and meanness in this world, and I bet he'll learn that at a much earlier age than we did when we were children.

A strong reaction is normal in a situation like that. Also normal? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That could be what caused you to have the shakes.

When I had all the cougar/garden trouble a few years back, it was terrifying. Once it was over and I felt safer again, my body still had an intense reaction (pounding heart, fear, the desire to flee......etc.) whenever I saw a photo of a cougar. Just a photo! Logically, my mind knows a cougar in a photo cannot hurt me, but emotionally or psychologically, the fear I experienced back then in the yard and garden comes right back. Although that reaction has diminished a lot over the years, it still happens when I see a photo of a cougar. Still. It is mind-boggling. I laugh about it, but it really is unsettling to realize one's mind/body still does a mini freak-out over something that happened years before.

During that summer and fall, my body had the same reaction every time I walked in the same spot where I'd had the second cougar encounter. It didn't happen at the area of the first encounter, but with the first one, I wasn't nearly as close to the cougar as I was with the second one, so perhaps it was not frightening in the same way. I understand the reaction to physically being in the same spot. I do. But to have that sort of reaction to a photo? It made me feel like I was losing my mind. As the reaction has lessened over the years, I just accepted it was a sort of minor PTSD thing beyond my control. Still, to this day, I don't go looking at cougar photos.

I'm just so thankful y'all are okay. I'm keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed and hoping you have the most boring week ever this week to make up for last week.

Dawn