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joel_webber21

Bacterial Spot, Early Blight, or insects?

10 years ago

Hello,

I'm a first time
gardener and trying to figure out what's wrong with my tomatoes. I have 2
cherry tomato and 2 early girl plants in a small raised bed. They were
planted 8 weeks ago, and got off to a slow start. I found they responded
well to Neptune's Harvest fish and seaweed 2-3-1 fertilizer. But I
realized about 1.5 weeks ago I was probably over fertilizing at 1-2 times per
week, so I have stopped completely. The plants grew very tall and I have
staked them. They looked very healthy, for the most part, with some spots
and yellowing and browning on the lower leaves, which I periodically pruned.
I have lots of fruit on the cherries, less on the EGs, but all green so
far. Nothing has started to turn red, and the EGs look small to me.
I have also mulched with straw about 4-5 weeks ago.

Now I have severe
brown/black spots and brown leaf edges on the lower 3/4 of my Cherries.
The lower portion of the early girls are also showing the same symptoms,
though not as bad.

I have been watering
the tomatoes twice a week by hand at the base. A good deep soaking.
Occasionally more often when we have had multiple 90+ days in a row.
This past week has been a heat wave, over 90 almost every day. ( I am located in south eastern Massachusetts) We haven't had any significant rain in over 2 weeks, so the leaves have been mostly dry. But this has seemed to have gotten worse quickly.

I've taken some pics
to show you what they look like. I appreciate any advice about
identifying what's wrong and how to deal with it.

On the plus side, my
cucumbers planted in the same bed are doing amazing!

Thanks in advance.


Comments (5)

  • 10 years ago

    IMHO, the most likely candidate is Septoria, given the heavy spotting on calyxes but none on fruit. Could also be bacterial speck, but that's less likely in hot, dry weather, or bacterial spot. Browning edges could be aggravated by overfertilization or hot weather.

    There's a ton of information available on options for these diseases, depending on how organic you want to be. But most options available to home gardeners don't cure-- just prevent and delay. We're well into your season, so if you get on this now, you should still be able to bring in a decent harvest. Prune off affected foliage, and spray the entire plant (fruit, flowers, stems, both sides of leaves) regularly (weekly, making adjustments if there is rain to wash off the treatment). This should slow down the progression of the infection so that your plants have a good chance of surviving and producing until frost.

    Joel thanked gorbelly
  • 10 years ago

    Also, liquid fertilizer washes out easily. Get a tomato appropriate fertilizer (not so high in N, higher in P and K) and keep fertilizing, just not as often as you were doing before.

  • 10 years ago

    That is great info, thanks Gorbelly! Somehow I had not come across Septoria in my research, but now that I'm looking it up it seems to fit very closely with my symptoms.

    So far I have stayed 100% organic, and hope to keep it that way. I'm a little hesitant to use copper even though it is organic.

    I have some cornell formula that I made to protect my young cucumbers from powdery mildew. It sounds like some people have had success with it slowing Septoria as well. I think I will try that and see if it slows the spread.


    Its actually drizzling today for the first time in a while. Should I wait for the leaves to dry thoroughly before pruning off the badly affected foliage?

    Thanks so much for your help.







  • 10 years ago
    last modified: 10 years ago

    When you prune isn't that crucial IMHO, but you do want to be able to spray right after you prune, so do it at a time when it's not currently raining.

    I use Bonide organic copper and alternate with Serenade. I have no disease on my plants this year, but that could also be coincidental, as a lot of people report lesss disease pressure this year. From what I understand, there's quite a bit of misinformation out there about Cornell formula. For one, it's potassium bicarb, not sodium bicarb, that was found to be the more effective ingredient, and it requires a spreader-sticker to work properly. AFAIK, it's very effective against powdery mildew but there's much less agreement about whether or not it works on something like septoria.

    Joel thanked gorbelly
  • 10 years ago

    OK, good to know. Thanks again for the great info.

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