I see just one leaf and can't tell anything without seeing the whole plant since wilting refers to more than one leaf.

And that one leaf seems to have a purplish cast to it.

Am I seeing the color correctly?

Was it an ASAP wilting of the whole plant with foliage staying green?

Based on your answers here maybe one might consider Bacterial Wilt and several others.

Why Bacterial Canker? Do you see the cankers?

Steve, if it's just one plant and no others then it's hard to imagine that the plant has a systemic disease found in the soil, although it is possible, tho not common.

You say new seeds. Commercial or traded or whatever?

Carolyn

Thanks for responding.

These seeds are commercial from an heirloom company we never used before. I wish I knew how to post another better picture, but I would have to start another post. We sprayed a mixture of green guard and fish emulsion the day of the post and the plant seemed to respond well, but it is starting to wilt again and 3 more branches are being affected. No cankers, I am new, just grabbing for straws. One of the pictures on the Aggie site looked like it could be Bacterial Canker, but I was pretty much wrong.

Anyway, the leaves are wilting with soft darking edges that may border on purple, there's a general downturn in the branch, the vasculature of the stem looks normal to me after pulling one off, but I haven't looked for ooze yet. We did a soil test a month ago and know we have low levels of Phosphorous, but have fertilized a little to make up for it. Once granular with Tomatotone (2 tbsp/plant) and fish emulsion about every other week.

I think it is verticillium wilt because 1) It started to happen at fruit set 2) There is no chlorosis of the leaves 3) There is no white ooze after dipping clipping in water. Other obs: wilt occurs on one side of the branch with 1/2" to 1" brown steaks on both sides of the wilted leaf

The plant is still hanging on, with two marble sized tomatoes. Should I pull it?

Thanks

Well, I pulled the G. Zebra. It looked like it wanted to hang on, but once the rains from the remnants of Dennis came, it started to wilt again. The link is to the disected plant and leaves in various stages of death and one picture of our garden. I cut off a clean branch that showed no signs of disease to start a new plant. We'll see how that goes.

The vasculature was brown and >90% of the roots were brown. No sign of nemotodes.

My best guess is verticillium, but a am a real amateur. Without a doubt that is the worst soil in the garden and gets the least amount of sun, but still >9 hours. Another plants nearby it (purchased pink girl) was stunted. We pulled it to find brown roots as well. In the same vicinity the Big Red, Anna Russian, Prince Borg. and Golden Boy are doing OK.

I'll let the forum know how the clipping goes.

We will be happy if we only lose 2 out of 35 plants. BTW, in a couple of days we'll be picking a Cherokee Purple and Prince Borg.!

Thanks for the help.
Steve

PS. We saw some sugar ants raising a colony of aphids on a 100 corn tastle this morning. Must have been 10 square inches of aphids in various stages with ants all over tending the heard. We also got to see about 5 ladybugs pigging out. SO COOL. I sprayed them with Neem oil, but I will try to post a pic if is still looks good.

http://sjones23.photosite.com/071505/

Steve

I would rethink using cuttings from a diseased plant that you suspect had a virus even if that bit showed no sign of the disease.

(PS your garden is very pretty--hope you get lots of tomatoes from your remaining plants!)

Thanks for the advice Farkee, but I will be keeping this one isolated. More of an experiment than anything. I would be surprised if it didn't show signs of disease soon. Thanks for the compliment. We got our first tomatoes this weekend: 2 Cher. Pur., 5 Prince Borg. and 1 Early Girl