First, this past Saturday I bagged up a patio tomato plant which had been a gift to me from a friend; it’s one of the “Bonnie” brand and it was purchased at Wal-Mart. To me, it looks blighty and it just hadn’t been doing all that well, anyway; it might be suffering from a different disease, but I decided it just isn’t worth the risk of late blight (or early blight, or anything that might be contagious), so it got sealed up in a lawn-and-leaf bag and has been left to cook in the sunshine. Next Sunday evening it will go out to the tree lawn for yard waste collection (Monday morning.)
But I have another plant not doing well, although its symptoms are different. I started through the archives for “Diseases,” but my anxiety level about this is higher than I’ve been able to contain long enough to dig through all the tomato entries.
I’ve been to a couple of Google sites for ID’ing plant diseases, but nothing seems to fit the situation.
This is an heirloom variety, Pink Brandywine. It’s in a raised bed with two hybrids, some marigolds, a few purple onions and about twice as many shallots as purple onions—in case this makes any difference.
I got the plants into the ground late in the season: end of June, early July, so I’m not expecting miracles of production.
The two hybrids are developing fruit, have fruit ripening, and of course making more blossoms; I’ve harvested all of two plum tomatoes so far (go ahead and laugh—I understand!), but they looked photo-shoot perfect and tasted even better. The plants themselves are not huge (yet), just about two-and-a-half feet tall, and bushy, but they are vigorous and seem quite healthy: no spots, no discoloration, no blight (so far, Amen!),
The Pink Brandywine, however, had been going along very enthusiastically, and then one hot day looked completely dish-rag limp. No discoloration anywhere.
Mindful of the whole late-blight scourge this season, I’ve been hand-watering. Could I have forgotten to water this plant? Maybe I had, so I fetched and carried and gave it a big drink.
It seemed to perk up, except for the leaves on one of the four stems.
Those seemed all right for a day or so, but by this Sunday past it was back to the floppy, listless leaves. Those leaves *may* be curling, but it’s hard to tell. They’re so soft and droopy, they kind of fold on themselves. Dishrag-like.
This past Friday, Sunday and yesterday I gave it big, big drinks, but as of yesterday evening no improvement.
Every single leaf is a green dishrag.
There’s no yellowing, no spots, no darkening. The stem has appeared normal so far except for that “no water floppy sprawl” thing, but I might be missing something. I have not cut into a stem to examine its tissue and don’t know that I’d know what to look for.
The one thing that is different from when I first noticed this is, the flowers look hard, almost petrified without being discolored. (Don’t know how else to explain this.)
Sorry I have no photos right now: I foolishly left my camera at the house of a friend who’s out of town on business. Probably I can retrieve it tomorrow and have pictures by Thursday.
Meanwhile, any ideas?
Thanks!
