I was really trying to avoid posting yet another "OMG IS THIS X WILT?!?!?" thread. But alas, I cannot figure out what is going on with my last tomato plant- a Celebrity hybrid from Bonnie. The condition happened to my Husky Tomato, which is now dead, but I couldn't figure out what happened there either. Please, please, please help me. I have tried to figure this out for a month but now I am crying uncle and asking the much more experienced gardeners here.
I'll try to give as much information as I can.
Planting: I planted the Celebrity kind of late in the season (late May/early June) in Bacco potting mix mixed with some extra perlite for drainage. The soil is still really fluffy and not compacted at all. The pot is a 15 gallon pot and the plants underneath are some lettuce seedlings I'm experimenting with.
Watering: I water the tomatoes when the soil is dry-ish and/or when the top leaves look droopy (which sometimes happens even when there is still some moisture 1-2 in. below).
Fertilizing: I was fertilizing with an organic tomato fertilizer (maybe a half dose bi-weekly) the but it isn't slow release and I was worried that it would just get flushed out of the containers, so I got some slow release stakes (Job's, maybe?) and put them in when I repotted it in the big blue pot. Also added it to the Cherry Husky at the time.
Weather: It got full sun for most of the summer, and then partial on the balcony. The summer has been a mix of long periods of rain and 90+ temps. The last few weeks have been in the high 70s-mid 80s, down to about 60 at night, and sunny or partly sunny.
Spraying: Spraying a lot with copper because we had a lot of EB this summer, plus had a fan on the balcony to increase air flow. This plant here was kept away from the others and so hardly had any EB at all. The Cherry Husky had a lot of EB, plus spider mites, aphids, and (I think) thrips? I have a mix of neem, copper, and some Garden Safe soap that I sprayed the Cherry with as kind of a last resort, figuring it was dying anyway. I have sprayed it on the Celebrity but weeks ago and there were few if any burn symptoms.
Symptoms/progression: Wilting at the top not fixed by watering or not watering. V-shaped yellowing at the edges of leaves that turn into brown lesions. The lesions start at the bottom of the plant and work their way up. No concentric rings in the lesion.
They are the same symptoms that seemed to finally do in the Husky Cherry. That plant had had issues in general over the season- spider mites, aphids, thrips (I think), EB, some moist-ish grey patches on some leaves that looked like LB. It was root bound, but still produced lots of tomatoes and seemed to be fine as long as I kept up with the watering on hot days. Then the V-shaped lesions appeared, the wilting from the bottom up, and the wilting at the top that looked exactly like it needed water but it didn't resolve after being watered. When I started thinking it might be a vascular wilt of some sort, I thought about pulling it, but I wanted to know what it was first. I cut section after section of the main branches- no milkiness when stalks are put in water, no dark streaks. Towards the base of the main stems there is a woody layer in the stalk that is light tan- like wood. I believe it is the secondary xylem? Same thing when I cut the entire plant 1 in. above the surface- a wood-colored woody layer around the interior of the stalk.
I can't figure out how to post multiple pics in one post so I'll just follow up with additional pics below.
aphidsquishOriginal Author
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