Tuesday, June 14, 2011

News from the garden: Attack of the Tomato Killers!

So the garden has been very giving.

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Crooked neck squash

But Mother Nature hasn't been very forgiving. It's been raining hard and raining tons. After a few nights' worth of heavy showers, we would walk apprehensively into the garden in the mornings. Sure enough, there would always be a bean plant here, a bell pepper there, knocked over, dashed to the ground. Soiled and muddy. Demolished and destroyed.

The J-man patiently re-erects them, staking the plants, straightening them out. He would water and I weed. Together, we try to keep this fragile garden going, growing.

But just as we thought we'd managed pull one over Mother Nature, disaster strikes again! Our tomato plants are infected. The leaves have spots on them and are yellowing. And they start at the bottom of the plant. The tomatoes are thankfully unharmed as far as we can tell. We've been trying to identify the possible viruses but it's really daunting and frustrating trying to sort through a million different contradicting pictures on gardening websites! We don't know if it's septoria, blight or goodness knows what else!

Here is a photo and if anyone knows what it is, or if you know of any good gardening sites, please help!

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4 comments:

  1. Yeah, that looks pretty bad. Hope you figure things out. That squash looks delish!
    Ang

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  2. Oh, no! That sucks! At least the tomatoes are ok. I hope you get to the bottom of it before they're in trouble, too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here's something I found. Tells you how to differentiate between Septoria and blight.

    http://hisandhersdiy.com/how-to-identify-septoria-leaf-spot-on-tomato-plants-fungus/

    (Scroll down to see example of leaves infected by the 2)

    http://www.tomatodirt.com/tomato-problems-tomato-leaves-are-turning-yellow-and-stems-are-dying-off.html


    Good luck! Will be too bad if it dies :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. thanks for the support girls! we think it's septoria and have been using a biofungicide to treat it, cutting off the infected stems and disposing of the leaves and stems carefully... i don't think they're going to survive though. it's hard to get rid of it, but we'll try again next season.

    ReplyDelete

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