What the devil is happening to my Lucky Cross?
 

The frontmost 'mater plant in the first photo is my lone Lucky Cross, taken a week and a half ago. The second is the very same Lucky Cross, taken today. Hasn't grown much compared to its buddy the Cherokee Purple in the same box, and the leaves have acquired a weird bumpy texture and are curling in on themselves. No discoloration whatsoever though, so I'm completely stumped.

Is this something I should be considering yanking the plant out over?

Well, I pull plants that do that. Usually it is some unidentified virus
or viroid (could be Curly Top, which is not endemic here but not unknown,
either), and I do not want plant-chewing insects spreading it to nearby
plants. When my plants do that, they do not recover. Cutting it off does
not help, the plant stays stunted and deformed.

I have already pulled and tossed a couple of seedlings that had those
symptoms this year a few weeks after plant out.

Interesting me being the novice only growing tomatoes for 5 years I did not see anything to be alarmed about if it were me I would do the wait and see but again I am by far from an expert. I am pretty sure the second photo is what allot of my PL leaves look like once established, now the not growing in hieght I have not experianced that.

Craig

[QUOTE=Gobig_or_Gohome_toms;217257]Interesting me being the novice only growing tomatoes for 5 years I did not see anything to be alarmed about if it were me I would do the wait and see but again I am by far from an expert. I am pretty sure the second photo is what allot of my PL leaves look like once established, now the not growing in hieght I have not experianced that.

Craig[/QUOTE]

I'm pretty new to this heirloom tomato obsession, too, and last year I had quite a few out of the ~175 I trialed that looked much worse than your pictures in the beginning but they produced tomatoes. Many had leaves that were bumpy and curled down around the edges. Also, my Lucky Cross plant took its sweet time getting to a "normal" height. I'd leave it for a while and see what happens, especially if you don't have replacement plants. Just my 2 cents.

I did have backups, so I only lost a couple of weeks of root growth during
cold weather by replacing the doubtful looking ones. They were close to
other plants, and one could easily see the difference in the new leaves
developing between all of the normal ones and the couple of abnormal
ones.

I have had this happen before, too, and I recognized the shape of the
new growth. I assume it is the same insect carrying the same disease
that shows up about this time of year and always infects a few plants.
I sprayed everything with neem oil + murphy's oil soap (and a little
Fertall Chelated Minerals and molasses for good measure) that evening.
(I am hoping that the insect will detect the scent of neem oil as soon as
it lands on the plants and be sufficiently uncomfortable to move on to
some other kind of plant.)

It hadn't grown an inch, as opposed to its box-partner, and it began to drop its flowers, so I yanked it out. :( Thanks for the help, guys! At least it wasn't a false alarm like every single thing I thought was happening last year, I guess.

Now I get to replace it. MWAHAHAHAHAAHA.

[quote]Now I get to replace it.[/quote]

If I have a backup plant and it is close enough to the start of
the season to be worth planting it, simply removing the doubt
about whether I am wasting my time with that plant is usually a win
for me.

If the foliage is only twisted, especially parallel to the axis of a leaflet,
but the plant is still growing, that could be environmental (weather,
soil moisture, soil temperature, etc), and it is reasonable to ignore
the leaf shape and let it grow. When growth stops, too, yet the plant
right next to it is still growing fine, and there is no reason to suspect
some mineral deficiency or imbalance in the soil, that is likely an
infected plant whose space could be put to better use than watching
some plant not grow all season despite one's best efforts.

Too late now, but it could've been weather related. We've had a
strange pattern of temps here the past few weeks. Even plants next
to each other in the garden have different growth patterns, so I usually
wait and see. Of course the up side is that a replacement will still have
good time to grow now as opposed to waiting....

Lee