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sixtoll

new tomato plants sprouting from dying stems

9 years ago

I have a floridade tomato plant that i grew from seeds. Everything was growing fine until i started to notice the steams at the bottom starting to turn a bit yellow and when you touched it it did not have the same tomato smell you get when you touch a green stem. There was fruits already on the plant so i just cut back the leaves that were turning brown. The small tomatoes on the vine never grew to its full size and started to ripen. The flower buds that were pollinated never produced a tomato. I left the rest of my tomatoes to ripen on the vine. When they turned a nice red i started to pick them off. I was suppose to take the plant out but i did not habe the time yet. All the leaves started to turn brown and dry. I was suppose to pull them out when i noticed that there was new growth from the "elbow" (where the suckers comeout) of the discolored stems. I started to feed the tomato plants again and they are growing. My question is has anybody experienced this? Im so confused this is the first time ive grown tomatoes so i wanted to reach out if there are some tips i could get what to do. Do i cut it and try to root it out or should i just leave it on the mother plant?

Comments (6)

  • 9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Very interesting sixtoll. I can see this could be a pleasant reason to scratch one's head wondering. It really depends on what the driver was for the decline of the plant, so you need to post us pictures - we tend to be very visual in this forum since there are so many confounding factors that get us to a diseased or dead plant and a picture is accurate worth a million words, not much different from a doctor taking the patient history but then ordering x-ray images to study.

    But if the plant dried up, it probably would be a better idea to start with it's cutting to build a new root system and leave behind the potential for mold and disease growing up and attacking the new growth: provided the cutting has "the right stuff". Pic, por favor :-)

    PS. I congratulate you for growing Floridade. This cultivar is part of an illustrious history which I personally love...

    Cheers

    PC

  • 9 years ago

    I was un able to take a picture of my plant when it was drying up but it started to happen to my cherry tomatoes as well. So this is what it also looked like. What ever happend to it made the tomatoes on the vine ripen fast.


    Here is the photo of my tomato plant thats growing new shoots. The main stems are yellowish and dry to the touch and new healthy looking plants growing from its elbow.

    Im truly confused with whats happening. Also would you know whats happening to my cherry tomato plant?

  • 9 years ago

    I'm not sure what happened to your plant, but I too have been having issues and then the plants recover. It's pretty crazy how tough some of my plants are. What zone are you in?

  • 9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sounds to me like a pretty straightforward fungal infection. Did you apply any preventive fungicide? The leaves die, but the stems hold on long enough to try to produce new growth. That new growth will eventually be similarly infected if exposed to the diseased foliage. So one strategy is just to pull off the diseased foliage and hope for the best (while applying fungicide), and the other is to root the new growth in a place where the fungal spores haven't yet traveled. Weather conditions? Container plant? Growing medium? Feeding strategy?

    "The flower buds that were pollinated never produced a tomato." How did you know they were pollinated? The only way I know they were pollinated is if they produce a tomato.

  • 9 years ago

    The flowers that were pollinated had tiny tomatoes already it just turned brown after a while. I do keep them in containers. I am unsure of the contents of my poting mix because where i live there isn't as much of a choice of potting mixes. I feed them a liquid feed weekly. I only water when the top 2 inches of soil is dry. It did start when we had a few days of rain. Although im not sure if it was the rain because I did have another variety of tomato growing right beside it and that plant survived the carnage on the roof top.

    I don't live in the US but according to charts im a zone 11 .

  • 9 years ago

    Well, so they produced tomatoes, but the tomatoes didn't grow. That's a different kind of problem. But the plants are clearly stressed, and such plants will try to produce seeds, because that's their whole purpose in life, but the fruit won't thrive.

    Not sure how big your container is, but In a container, with the top two inches of soil being dry, that's pretty dry. But it doesn't look like thirst. In fact, I should ask if the drainage on your containers is good. In seedlings, those symptoms can be caused by overwatering and having the roots being soggy.

    So, no fungicide, and perhaps garden soil mixed into the planting mix? Onset after the foliage gets wet? I'm leaning toward a fungal explanation.