Sorry to hear of all you troubles with this issue. Where are you located?

Oh, sorry. Zone 6A (Western NY). I'll put that in my post.

If you've experienced tons of rainy conditions over a long period where the plants rarely had a chance to dry out then that could have contributed to your dismal year. As much as I welcome the rains here my tomato plants life span is diminished by too much rain and persistently wet foliage which invites various disease problems.

Yes, a few weeks ago over WNY there was 2" rain and flash flooding. It rained 5 inches in 2 weeks.

So sorry to hear about the devastating bacterial wilt! I should think that a bleach soak would be great for the grow bags and bamboo stakes. How big are the grow bags? I would suggest dwarfs or compact varieties for the future, as they do better in 5 gallon bags than regular indeterminates, although you could always prune to one stem if there was a variety that you particularly wanted to grow.

The again, if you want to grow nightshades in the garden again, you could always dig out the soil where the affected plants were growing, and put that in your flower garden, or somewhere else..... I try to rotate my garden end-to-end, but like you, I grow too many plants that are in the same family and not enough beans, cukes, kale, chard, cilantro, arugula and beets.

I understand loving tomatoes. Most of us do. And to put all that effort in, it really can be so frustrating! I don't know how long you've been vegetable gardening, but I think when I first started, my expectations were quite unrealistic. There are so many challenges to bringing in a good crop and you just don't know what is going to overwhelm a particular crop in any given season. That is why many vegetable gardeners try to plant a variety of crops, some that do well in heat, some in cold, some that like the rain, some that don't And some that are more sure bets, so that every season you have some success and every once in awhile you get a season where everything thrives.

We had 14 inches one night, followed by 1 to 2 inches each day over the next 5 days. By the end of the week the tomatoes either had wilt or were decimated by fungal disease. But I had planted them early enough that I had a good early crop. The peppers did better but were affected.

It is recommended to rotate so you only plant a nightshade in the same place every third year. I would just use 3 different raised beds and rotate to a different crop each year.

I would think disinfecting with 10% bleach on the metal post, keeping wet for 5 minutes should kill the bacteria. Bamboo would probably need to be soaked, sprayed a few times over a 30 minute time period. It would be harder to kill on bamboo since the interior could be infected. Metal is easier to disinfect.

I believe there are also wilt resistant varieties. i would choose one with resistance to wilt for the next several years. But if conditions are bad enough, resistant varieties will also be killed.

And as farmers say, there is always next year. Hope things go better. It can be very difficult to garden in humid conditions.

I am surprised, Southern Bacterial Wilt is a major problem in the southeast but I did not think it was also a northern problem. It is most active in hot humid conditions and especially in waterlogged soils.

It does seem to be attracted to certain varieties of tomatoes. I have never been able to a Boxcar Willie to bearing size. It is so attracted that I use that variety to test for the presence of Southern bacterial wilt. On the other hand I also have Tomato Spotted Wilt virus (TSWV) and rely on resistant varieties for production. So far I have never had one of these varieties succumb to SBW and I have growing them for about 20 years. Once in a while I will lose a bell pepper to SBW usually in a hot wet summer. Have not lost other peppers or eggplants tho. So my first suggestion is to go with varieties with a large disease package.

I rotate tomatoes with sweet corn (actually for nematode suppression) but it may help with SBW.

Does not seem to be attracted to vegetables other than solanums. So brassicas, cucurbits, etc should do ok.

I'm not sure about this, but I'd be a little skeptical about whether isolation from the bed soil by using grow bags will be successful. I have to assume that the bacteria can be transmitted by airborne dust, so just the presence of bacteria nearby may be enough to infect. Certainly insects can transmit it, and as they jump from soil to grow bags, you've got a problem. So just disinfecting posts may not prevent it. But yes, drier conditions will help.

@Labradors - I have every size grow bag from 2 gallons to 25 gallons! I have a couple of indeterminate pastes in 25 gallon bags going up a cattle panel and some determinate grapes in 15 gal. Since it's a rental, the yard was not well-maintained and my neighbor does not maintain the back edge of his yard or his trees. One of them is a gigantic silver maple (maybe 50 feet?) and is constantly dropping the nastiest leaves on my garden. I'm not sure what it has, but it isn't tar spot. It's way nastier looking and contorts all the leaves almost into little balls. I can't keep them all out of my garden. There's also a mimosa tree that drops its blossoms all over the yard, and I can't keep up with keeping them off of my tomatoes. It might just not be the right yard for a garden. *sigh* There's also awful diseased goutweed and ivy (from the silver maple) creeping into our yard that we have to weedwhack just to keep it from taking over completely. I thought I had found a little oasis in the middle of my yard but alas.

@prairiemoon2 z6b MA I stocked up on copper and daconil before I ever put a transplant in the ground, ready to wage war, and even bought varieties with combinations of LB/EB/V/F resistance in addition to heirlooms so that if something got to 'em, I could count on some of them making it to the first frost. But I hadn't counted on bacterial wilt (and bacterial spot, which I was fighting with middling success). I'm mostly upset because what I'm reading is that bacterial wilt is a death sentence for my garden - at least 5 years of no nightshades with diligent cover-cropping. This bed is filled with literally nothing but nightshades.

@garybeaumont_gw - There are rootstocks available for grafting that are resistant to bacterial wilt, but I have never grafted anything in my life. I guess I could try that, but the time and effort involved is almost prohibitive for me, as I work, go to school, and have a family to take care of. As far as I know there aren't any tomatoes that are bacterial wilt resistant that you would want to eat and not just use as rootstock. Also, won't bacterial wilt just kill everything next year, too? I haven't gotten a single tomato yet from the worst-affected ones. I got some cherry tomatoes just because they are cherry tomatoes and I'm surprised they don't just keep making tomatoes after they're in the compost bin, lol. I can try rotating but unfortunately our family eats the most tomatoes and peppers. I cook a lot of authentic mexican so tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers are most practical for our family to grow. I've got poblanos, guajillos, jalapenos, as well as bell peppers and sweet peppers and every size and shape of tomato. I'd have trouble filling this bed entirely with non-nightshades - it's large (L-shaped and 104 sf).

@farmerdill Yes, on CABI it says bacterial wilt is "absent/eradicated" from NY. Everything I've read says that bacterial streaming is diagnostic for bacterial wilt, and there was absolutely no denying the immediately positive test. However, I've also been battling bacterial spot - but I've only been able to find one source that says that bacterial spot will cause streaming. I also don't believe that it causes wilting. This source says that bacterial streaming from ralstonia solanacearum occurs slowly (after a few minutes) and is slow and thick. My bacterial streaming was immediate, about 4-5 seconds after submerging it, and in fact, I used a chip clip to clip the submerged stem to the side of the glass, and the act of clipping it made a bunch of white exudate shoot right out of the stem into the water. The exudate seemed thin, not thick.

The other thing is that there is no discoloration in the hollowed stem, but at the joint of the stem to the main leader where I clipped, it ripped slightly and there was plainly light brown discoloration there. I am not sure what else it could be besides bacterial wilt - my Rutgers is VF resistant and also the streaming is undeniable so I think it is bacterial. Also, we got like 5 inches of rain in 10 days (with two inches in one day) in mid-July and we had weather in the upper 80's and low 90's all through July.

@daninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa) You are probably right, but I've got nothing else I can do besides grafting if I want to grow tomatoes. I was also going to try putting them in the front yard, where there's less trees and weeds.

@ Kari - I am unfamiliar with this because I grow only a handful of tomato plants but more peppers and I don’t think I’ve had bacterial wilt. I might have and not known it was that, because whenever I see a branch with any kind of foliar issue, I prune it off and hope the plant will continue without a problem. This year I did have to toss two tomato plants that were in a pot. They were starting to get some spottiness on the lower branches, I pulled those, then I’d see a few more branches with some yellowing around the edges and pulled those.

Really we’ve had so much rain - I’ve had a good 20 inches since June 1st. My garden can use all that rain because there are so many maples with greedy roots around me, I never have standing water. But tomatoes are another story. It’s also been very cloudy and I was not getting production or a lot of growth. So I tossed those two pots soil and all into the rubbish.

I am an organic gardener and so I have never used anything to combat disease on any plant. If’ it’s diseased, out it goes. No pesticide, no fungicide in 35+ years. I do try to rotate. Actually 4 of my tomato plants were grown in new locations this year in my front bed with perennials and shrubs and roses and grasses. They have been pretty healthy so far I think. But - still not a lot of production. I almost always get tomatoes every year. Not as many as I’d like, but that is due more to not enough sun than anything else. Where did you hear that it would take 5 years of cover cropping? Just curious.

We love nightshades, but we also love other veggies. We grow a lot of peppers and can’t remember having a disease problem with them. They don’t grow next to my tomatoes usually. We love brassicas and lettuces beets, garlic, string beans, cucumbers. All non nightshade vegetables. You could consider growing a few tomatoes and peppers in pots next year. I have good luck with peppers in pots, but I never feel the tomato do as well in a pot, but if that’s all you can do it might be worth it. Then cover crop your main vegetable garden, which is only going to benefit your garden and then grow other crops for awhile.

I realize your response to someone else said you primarily eat a lot of nightshades. That may be, but there is a lot to be said for all the issues large farms that grow just one or two crops, have. To me, it is an invitation to insects and disease and something that can then destroy your entire garden, as you've seen.

I am a total novice gardener. One of my first experiences was with tomatoes. When it started to flower I was VERY happy. A couple of days later the plant died = bacterial wilt. I was VERY disappointed.

I had no idea this thing even existed, much less that it was so common in the lowlands of Panama (apparently in the mountains there is less or none)...

This was a few years ago... This year for the first time I am trying again. There are some resistant varieties. They are not as good as the non-resistant varieties however. I am going to try my hand at two things: (1) container growing - here the growing media theoretically shouldn't have the bacteria (which lives in the soil), and (2) grafting tomatoes.

Again, I had no idea that you could graft tomatoes, but after seeing a few videos on youtube I am willing to try it. Maybe I can get to grow some nice varieties grafted on resistant ones.

Good luck!

Something I plan to do next year is make sure they have plenty of air circulation and prune more to keep the inner growth from becoming too dense. I think I lucked out this year for the most part, because we've had a lot of rain, but we've also had a LOT of wind too.

Based on comments I don't think that many of you have bacterial wilt. This disease is both fast and deadly. today you may have a picture perfect vine. Tomorrow you check it and it looks like as if someone pored gasoline over it during the night. It is that fast. When you pull the plant it will be girded at the soil line.

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Yes! That is exactly what happened to me. One day beautiful vine with flowers, and then suddendly completely dead, wilted. The bacterial lives in the ground, from what I understand.

@farmerdill, are there other bacterial diseases cause bacterial streaming and hollowing of the stems? I'm holding out hope that the rest of the tomatoes will ripen so unfortunately I don't have a stem to spare right now to take a photo of. Maybe it's something different. Just everywhere I see, it says that bacterial streaming is diagnostic for bacterial wilt.

I was just watching Gardener's World and he was talking about helping your tomatoes to ripen faster and to remove a lot of leaves along with the suckers between the branches and the main stem and demonstrated what he meant. I'm thinking I might go out and do a little more of that tomorrow. Mine have started to turn red, I'd just like to speed it up so I can pull some of the plants.

Anyone know why a flower just turns brown and dries up and doesn't produce a tomato? Is that a pollination problem? I'm scratching my head because I see a lot of bees in the garden and my tomatoes are planted in among perennials etc.

Kari, I have some good and bad news. Good news is I found 4 varieties of tomatoes that are bacteria wilt resistant. Bad news is they are all from different companies. They are:

Invincible - from Hoss Tools. It is a roma type paste tomato. I grew it this year and it did very well until all the rains, but really no tomato would survive my conditions this year. And it did not die from B wilt like some of the other tomatoes. Best crop of roma's I ever had, even with the flood.

Florida 7514 - Jung Seed

Neptune - Heritage Seed Market

Tropic Boy - Seedman.com

If you private message me I have 4 or 5 extra Invincible seed I can send you. And I will probably buy the Neptune seed also. At least that way you could try a couple of varieties without having to pay several dollars just for shipping. I normally do not use all the seeds and do not mind sharing. But really only have around 5 that are extra.

Try this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0148ZR5F0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This one also supposed to work: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265186029624?epid=15044847400&hash=item3dbe51b038:g:w0wAAOSwACpf2G9S