This year I wanted to try a few different things with tomatoes to minimize my disease or maximize my productivity… One of them wants to buy varieties that we’re supposed to be improved and disease resistant.
This is country taste, honestly the seedlings have been some of the sickest looking things of everything I am growing and I feel like this leaf morphology they mean something to people who know more than I do. The first picture with curled/wilted leaves this is country taste, the second picture is several other tomatoes that were growing with it…only CT is doing this…
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Did you happen to use a potting soil that has any manure or “mushroom compost” in it? The persistent herbicides that hay grasses have been treated with pass through the intestines of animals and remain in the manure, causing the leaves to have an appearance like that.
If that is the case, why just one, not all?
there is a virus- Curly Top Virus… Looks similar. It could be transferred from seeds. I would probably discard it. It also could be lack of water for this particular one, let’s say there is not sufficient roots or uneven mix, so most of the water just run away… But because it is just one plant, I wouldn’t risk to bring the disease to the garden… It spreads by grasshoppers.
Lovely…does it overwinter in soil, etc. or at least vanish w the winter?
I don’t know, need to read more about it - never had it myself. Just saw when was looking for something else.
I may be wrong - they say the virus spread by beet leafhopper and gets sick 7-14 days after that. Nothing about transferred with seeds…
That is not beet leafhopper spread curly top virus. It looks more like something is affecting the roots of the plant, phytothora possibly. One possible cause is over-watering. Tomato seedlings should be let dry until they start to wilt then water. This is important for two reasons. It suppresses growth of phytothora and several other soil-borne organisms, and it stresses the plant which encourages a strong root system to develop.
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What kind of soil did you use to start the seedlings? Is it possibly contaminated with phytothora?
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How much daylight are the plants getting? If none, that may cause disease spread and slow growth.
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How long since you fertilized them? Excess fertilizer can damage roots giving symptoms similar to yours.
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Variety is also important. Most paste/heart shape tomatoes have the “wilty” gene which will give leaves like yours.
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Some spray materials can cause wilted leaves just like yours. Daconil is one that does so.
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Maybe it is the genetics. I should mention the first starting was in 4x3 mini-cells, The other two rows had a total of three different tomato varieties and none of them showed that weird Wity-leaf tendency, even though they shared soil and hydration levels……all 4 country taste did
