Hi, Joe.

Any chance these poor souls might have gotten brushed with Roundup, or mulched with lawn clippings laced with Weed&Feed? I'd guess the latter since Roundup tends to cause skinny shoestring leaves rather than the balls and corkscrews of 2,4-D, but it could very well be herbicide damage of any kind.

The other option is a virus like Curly Top. Tomatoes can grow out of moderate herbicide damage, but viruses just get worse and worse. If you can't figure out any way it could possibly have gotten herbicide exposure (check the drift from the neighbors!), assume the worst. The only cure for a virus is to pull the plant.

I'm hoping that someone fed the lawn right next to them with Weed&Feed or something -- I hate seeing good plants taken down by viruses.

There's only one way to know whether you can still get tomatoes this year, and that's to try. I'd see whether you can grab one of the early, short season tomatoes like Stupice or Oregon Spring. If nothing else, cherries are always fast and give you a taste of summer...

--Alison

Hey Alison,
Thanks for the response. Now that you mention it I did loan a small part of my garden to a neighbor who did not have time to build her own plot. She mentioned that she used to get good results from grass clipping spread around the plants. So long story short and this only being my second year of growing, I listened to her and placed grass clippings around the plants. Some of the grass was from my yard (I know I used weed & feed) and some came from her yard. A week or so back I removed the grass thinking I might be keeping the ground too moist with the grass. Is there any chance that the plants can recover from this damage? If not and I pull them can I replant in the same area?

Thanks,
Joe

Well, the only thing I can suggest is to make a deadline for how long you're willing to wait before replanting... if they start to improve before then, you keep them, and otherwise yank and replace. Cut off the worst-affected stems to stimulate a little growth (if they're up to it), but keep most of the plant intact so that it can keep up its strength as much as possible. Feed them a normal dose of fertilizer, too.

I've been trying to get information more specific than "plants showing moderate damage will recover". One QA person said outright that if it's not immediately lethal, the plants will recover (eventually). So it's a waiting game.

Removing the grass was a good first step. 2,4-D is water soluble, so you could try irrigating more to flush the herbicide out as much as possible, assuming you have decent drainage (you don't want to drown them, either). If you have to replant, it should be safe to use the same soil so long as the grass is gone.

I'm seeing the persistence time for 2,4-D in soil listed as 7 days, and 14 days max in compost. It doesn't stick around much, unless it's taken up by living plant material.

--Alison

Thanks for the advice. Half my plants are very established and half are on the small side. So the small ones will go and the bigger ones will hopefully pull out of it. With the better established plants, is there any potential for this chemical getting into the already formed fruit?

Joe

This is what's happening to mine!! The picture is perfect, except that mine are a darker green. There is no way I can think of that this is herbicide damage, it's on the plants that came from one vendor only, and not all of those. First it was just one plant, now it's three,but they are not adjacent to one another. I am so upset with this. Is it going to attack all my plants? If I rip the bad ones out, or cut off the new growth that's affected, is there any hope?
The garden was doing so well, too, My first try. Sigh
Any advice welcome :(.
Margo

Joe, have your tomatoes improved at all? I have yet to get a response from anyone who knows what the problem is, and that's posting the question in three different places :(. I hate to kill them if there's hope, but don't want it to spread.....

Thanks,
Margo