Stunted tomato plants with knobby protusions & discolor on stalks
After 3 years of incredible tomato gardens (plants 8' to 12' tall toppled my cages the 1st year) I have a serious problem this year. Or perhaps I should say "problems". Spider-mites for one, but I'm dealing with those with a polymer product that I read about here and ordered and it should arrive any day now. But I don't think that is my only or worst problem. Even though the accompanying photo is admittedly poor quality (but the best I can do without borrowing a better camera) it still shows what I am concerned about. To wit: very stunted plants about 12" to 18" tall (and keep in mind they were transplanted 6 weeks ago) with discolorations and knobby protrusions on the stalk.
I have searched the web for 2 weeks now, but can find nothing remotely resembling this. It appears to be a disease, but what? My wife says "pull-em and replant", but if this is a soil-borne problem I fear new transplants may well suffer the same fate. It seems to me to be imperative to determine what this is b4 going any further!
The only things I have done differently this year are:
- We burned off a brush pile and I mixed some of the ashes in whenever I prepared the soil for planting.
- We have a number of pine trees on our property and I had read (here, I think) that pine needles make an excellent mulch and hey, it's free! That's all the different stuff.
FWIW, I put the pine needles on top of 4 or 5 layers of newspaper with a soaker hose underneath as has been my method in years past.
Oh, and another thing - the bottom leaves of some of the plants are turning brown with a lot of small holes in them. My nursery guy says he has seen a lot of spider mites, but has never seen them cause holes in the leaves. And no, we don't have an ant problem.
So to sum this mess up - I have spider mites, holey, brown leaves & stunted plants that look like something out of a Stephen King movie!
I suppose that in my heart I knew that the past 3 years had been almost too good to be true, but I was getting a pretty swelled head about my "Super-Garden" nonetheless. Hello reality check...
Anyway, any help or guidance anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Ray...
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