Yellow leaves/black spotting on Pink Oxhearts

Greg1964

18 years ago

Hi, I am a total newbie here as well as in the garden, and have looked at the problem solvers 1&2, and nothing quite compares to what is going on with my pink oxhearts, it does appear similar in a couple of ways to early blight or septoria leaf spot. I am in z6, at 3000' alt., and we have had a day or so of unseasonably hot weather, and almost daily thundershowers here, if that might help in diagnosis. As I am new to gardening, I would like a more enlightened opinion than my own.there is a photolink below. I don't want to junk up the forum, but if someone would look specifically at my problem, I would be grateful, as I am just about to have a full-blown panic attack over my "babies".

I have several varieties of tomatoes in my garden, including Nicolaevna, Pink Brandywine, White Wonder, White Beauty, Great White, Ky Beefsteaks, Giant Beefmaster, Hillbilly, Hybrid Heavyweight, Cherokee Purple,and Green Zebras, along with 4 varieties of cherry tomatoes. I ordered the Nicolaevnas from Europe, and would be darn-near devastated if something happened to eradicate all of them along with my CPs and Brandywines.

I have also found bugs that match the photos of the Colorado Potato Beetle larvae (think mutated, soft, squishy ladybug looking fellows w/2 rows of spots down each side) on my plants,and have just been picking them off and squishing them. Would this by any chance be symptomatic of their devastation?

Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of the spots

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Comments (4)

carolyn137
18 years ago
Colorado Potato Beetle larvae eat foliage and you'd also find the orange egg clusters on the undersides of leaves.

I can't really see enough of the internal structure of those spots to determine with confidence what is shown.

I tend to lean towards bacterial and tend to lean towards Bacterial Spot rather than Bacterial Speck as the disease you're seeing rather than a common fungal foliage disease.

Please look at the pictures in the Problem Solver and you can also Google additional pictures to look at. When you go to Google click on IMAGE above the word entry box and then in the box enter Bacterial Spot.

Carolyn
nctom
18 years ago
It does appear to be bacterial spot to me as well. The green halos around the spots are a good sign.

If it were early blight you should be able to see rings in the spots. Septoria would have a light center in each spot

Carolyn and I were checking this out at the same time and I was doing just as she suggested so I could post with a ittle more assurance.

There's a good chance this plant is a lost cause (sorry). If treated early enough a copper based spray can be effective.

Good luck.
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Greg1964
Original Author
18 years ago
Thanks guys, I just found some "tomato dust" out in the barn, a copper based product that maybe I can use until I get into town again. Not too many tears are going to be shed over losing a couple of P.O.s, I think I have 11 of them planted, and maybe I can head this off at the pass for the other varieties with some copper spray. Any recommendations on the brand?

Also, should I pull these plants or leave them to die a slow natural death?

I was expecting a fairly high mortality rate being my first year growing so if I pull these, I will have approx 70 tomato plants left. LOL, hopefully, knowing my weakness can become my greatest strength (in the garden, anyhow)!
carolyn137
18 years ago
Greg,

It isn't clear to me how many of your plants have this disease. Since ALL initial foliage infections are spread via the air then all would be susceptible.

And while some of the leaves may look bad, if you get on top of this with something like Kocide, as a spray, or Mancozeb, or whatever good copper containeing prep you can get, there's still a very good chance you can slow the spread of disease and that new foliage might be uninfected.

Carolyn