How to Identify the Problem With a Tomato Plant
The tomato (solanum lycopersicum) is a herbaceous member of the nightshade family, which causes a world of controversy by devoted fans who cannot decide on whether it is a fruit or vegetable. If you grow these juicy, red delights in your home garden, you may come across a diseased plant now and then. Further scrutiny may also lead you to discover the presence of insects burrowing in and out of the ripe tomatoes that you had planned to harvest for lunch. It is important to identify these tomato plant problems, so you can choose the best course of action in hopes of saving the remainder of the crop. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Copper sprays
- Sulfate sprays
- Soaker hose
- Pheromones or black light traps
- Pesticides
Instructions
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Check for black spots on the leaves of your tomato plants. Dark circles, surrounded by dark rings, are a sign of early blight. Eventually, the leaves may turn yellow and die off. Early blight is a fungus, which requires treatment with copper or sulfate sprays.
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Notice if the leaves of your tomato plants contain irregularly shaped gray patches. If so, you are probably dealing with a disease known as gray leaf spot, which can cause leaf drop. Plants affected by gray leaf spot disease require immediate removal from the garden to avoid affecting the other plants.
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Determine if your tomato plant leaves are turning brown. Also notice whether the leaves wilt during the afternoon and return to normal at night. If this is the case, you may have a problem with verticillium wilt. This disease also requires the removal of affected plants.
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Look for tiny dark spots on the leaves. Tomato plants affected by septoria leaf spots will often have leaves covered with these tiny black spots, which you can combat with the use of a copper spray.
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Take a good look at the tomatoes on your tomato plants. Check for tiny, round sunken-in spots on the fruit. These spots can be a symptom of anthracnose, a fungus that can cause your fruit to rot. Anthracnose occurs when the leaves are constantly wet during watering or when the wet soil splatters up on the leaves when watering with a garden hose. To combat the anthracnose fungus, pick off the bottom 12 inches of foliage and use a soaker hose that will direct the water down and not up.
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Check your tomato plants for rotting fruit. This could be a symptom of buckeye or blossom rot. Blossom rot appears on ripe fruit, while buckeye rot affects tomatoes that are still green. Both of these diseases require the immediate removal of affected tomatoes.
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Look for pests on the tomato plants. Fruitworms are light green or pink to brown, nearly black caterpillars that are best controlled with pheromones or black-light traps. Armyworms have green bodies with dark lateral stripes and can cause serious defoliation. Armyworms often require the use of pesticides. Leaf miner maggots are also tomato pests that require pesticide removal.
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Tips & Warnings
Late blight appears as gray spots, surrounded by white rings on the leaves of tomato plants. Treatment of late blight also requires the use of a copper or sulfate spray.
Other types of ripe tomato diseases include black mold, sour rot and cankers. Black mold causes large black, rotting spots on the tomatoes, while sour rot causes cracks. Cankers appear as dark lesions on the fruit. Each one of these diseases requires the immediate removal of the fruit.
Do not allow affected tomatoes to fall onto the soil. Diseased fruit can cause the soil to become diseased and affect future crops.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit tomatoes on vine image by Horticulture from Fotolia.com
