Any Ideas on these please...

[PureHarvest]

Water, light, temperature, and wind. Then to add, what is your mix made out of?
Pick one or all of those and there's your problem.
Yeah, I know, really helpful right? LOL
But your problem lies in the above.
Wild guess, your mix is off somehow, but would be more forgiving if your temps were good and your plants were acclimated to outdoor light intensity after being started indoors. Even mix that is holding too much water could be tolerated if you had warm temps and bright light.
If you are hovering 50-60 degrees and it is cloudy and windy, and your mix is off, I expect to see what you have posted.

[PureHarvest]

What is is the tomato mix? I don't think you would have needed to add more peat assuming the tomato mix is peat based. More perlite would be ok.

Originally Posted by murihikukid

Gorbelly....Interesting message ...So I rule out the cat ...then the next paragraph really strikes home and I will tell you why ...I worked out the bleach concentration quite some time ago and thought I had it right IE about 45ml of 4.9% bleach to a litre of water ....I now believe this could be far too strong based on what I have now read in a recent post ...
My back up plants bought from a garden centre were (on advice) sprayed (because they are the worst for carrying disease so I was told ) and have been killed by the bleach and copper spray I carried out so things have just gone bad to worse...The granular stuff you see is a root additive that I was told to put round the stem of my dieing plants .... Trichoderma Granules name ROOTMATE Bio Fungicide.....as for my soil mix..I believed I was quite safe using commercially available Tomato Mix 2 parts with one part peat moss and one part perlite....

After two relatively good seasons of growing some tomatoes last year was a complete disaster which led me to joining Tomatoville ,,,I do not have anything like the diseases this season ...Maybe I over reacted to advice on my initial situation and made my situation far worse by using an incorrect bleach recipe ...I do not know ....

Maybe what I am doing now was the real answer...cutting leaves off with a pair of scissors as soon as they show the slightest sign of an infection...
Ron

[gorbelly]

Just to clarify, cat urine can certainly have pathogens in it, but it's highly unlikely to contain anything that will cause disease in plants (as opposed to animals). The biggest danger to plants from any kind of urine is if it builds up enough to accumulate too much in the way of salts or if it makes the soil too "hot" with nitrogen. One cat is unlikely to achieve that.

Re: bleach--

I found out the hard way that if you use any kind of spreader/surfactant like dish soap or any commercial "sticker" product with bleach spray, it amplifies the effects too much and damages plants.

For tender young seedlings, I would make sure to use the kind of spray bottle used for makeup/cosmetic uses that can deliver a more fine mist and barely mist the leaves of the seedlings. IIRC, Bill recommends a fine spray or mist, even with mature plants. So your concentration may be too strong, may be staying on the leaves too long if you're using additives meant to break surface tension, or may be sprayed in too large a quantity. Or some combination thereof.

It's actually possible that the damage in your photos is a combination of drooping/shock from transplantation + damage from improperly or properly applied bleach spray. Without the bleach, the plants might have perked back up and been fine in a few days. But in their vulnerable, wilted state, the bleach would have been far more damaging than it would have been on normal, turgid foliage. I make it a policy to never spray anything on a wilted plant because 1) a plant in a wilted state is far more vulnerable to foliar damage--something I learned from sad experience and 2) widespread/overall wilting is a problem down in the roots or usually in the crown or main stem and not something that can usually be fixed by any foliar spray.

Also, it's best to limit the stresses on young plants at any given time. So if I'm transplanting, I do nothing else until a few days have passed and I can be sure the plants are recovered/do not need recovery.

[GrowingCoastal]

I noticed some damage last summer from using a wee drop of dish soap with the bleach spray because (I think) the tomatoes were under cover and never had the soap washed off by rain leading to accumulation with repeated spraying. I don't see that in your pics though.

"from now on the mixing bowl will be covered and bleach sprayed"
I don't know if you are spraying to deter the cat or another reason. I read that animals smell urine when they smell bleach and it attracts them to urinate there.

[gorbelly]

Originally Posted by GrowingCoastal

I noticed some damage last summer from using a wee drop of dish soap with the bleach spray because (I think) the tomatoes were under cover and never had the soap washed off by rain leading to accumulation with repeated spraying. I don't see that in your pics though.

I had pretty bad damage after spraying only once with bleach spray that had a small amount of soap in it. So it wasn't accumulation for me. It's that the soap magnified the effects of the bleach a lot.

Originally Posted by GrowingCoastal

I don't know if you are spraying to deter the cat or another reason. I read that animals smell urine when they smell bleach and it attracts them to urinate there.

They aren't attracted to bleach. But they will sometimes pee where they smell ammonia.

[murihikukid]

Please can we look at the bleach recipe not in oz cause we gave that away in 1967 and I only think in metric.....Now IMP uses a 1 part to 9 with his 2 % bleach so first lets look at a 2% bleach as against a 4.95 % bleach (which is all I can get).....am I right in saying basicly the 4.95 % is 2.5 times stronger than Imps 2 % ....he uses a 1 part to 9 solution with his 2%......I would have to use 0.4 of a part to 9 parts..0r looking at it in metric.....1000ml (one litre) devided by 9 = 111.11111ml which is then divided by 2.5 = 44ml....If this is right I know the reason for the "disease" on my initial tomatoes plus my replacement parts I bought from a local gardening centre....My bleach mix was too strong... Ron

[b54red]

Originally Posted by murihikukid

Please can we look at the bleach recipe not in oz cause we gave that away in 1967 and I only think in metric.....Now IMP uses a 1 part to 9 with his 2 % bleach so first lets look at a 2% bleach as against a 4.95 % bleach (which is all I can get).....am I right in saying basicly the 4.95 % is 2.5 times stronger than Imps 2 % ....he uses a 1 part to 9 solution with his 2%......I would have to use 0.4 of a part to 9 parts..0r looking at it in metric.....1000ml (one litre) devided by 9 = 111.11111ml which is then divided by 2.5 = 44ml....If this is right I know the reason for the "disease" on my initial tomatoes plus my replacement parts I bought from a local gardening centre....My bleach mix was too strong... Ron

I can only go by what I use or have used in the past and that is in ounces and gallons. You can do the conversions if you want to. Before the newer and much stronger 8.25% sodium hypochlorite bleach solution now commonly used, we used to get bleach in a 5% strength. Back then I used 6.5 to 7 ounces to a whole gallon of water with a few drops of dish washing liquid added. Now with the stronger bleach I use between 5 and 5.5 oz to a full gallon.

Your calculations jive with mine but 44ml added to a full liter of water may be a bit weak according to what I used to use in that strength of bleach however it is a good starting point. As long as healthy young growing tips don't show any burn from the bleach spraying after a day or two then it isn't too strong. If you see some mild burning with a solution of bleach and water but no permanent damage then you have found your maximum strength that is safe to use; but I would only use this strength for the most difficult disease problems. When you find the right mix that kills most of your diseased leaves but does no damage to your new healthy leaves then you have found a good strength mix for most problems. Try to use a fine mist and hit all surfaces with as little puddling and runoff as possible and never spray when the sun is shining heavily on the plants. Wait two or three days after a spraying to see the results. It takes some time for the shriveling of diseased leaves to show up clearly. If however after spraying diseased plants you see no change in a day or two then you probably are using a mix too weak.

For tank spraying outside in the garden with multiple plants I think with the strength bleach you are describing I would start with 180 ml of bleach added to 4 liters of water. If that isn't strong enough then just add a bit more bleach each time until you find the right strength solution. If however that solution is too strong then your bleach is far different than ours. Look and see the sodium hypochlorite concentration because that is key. However your bleach may have other chemicals in it that could affect plants. I just don't know.

Of course you can mix the amount that is needed for however large the job is. Do not try to save the mix in your sprayer but immediately rinse it and run clean water through it to preserve your sprayer. Bleach is very harsh and corrosive and will ruin most small hand sprayers quickly.

Bill

[murihikukid]

Bill..Thanks for your comprehensive reply ...Let me assure you I bought my bleach from a cleaning company that bottles their own from a drum and it has no additives ..Thats why I never bought from a supermarket as bleaches available there have all sorts of things in it and very few have the percentage on the label ....I ended up with what I thought was a disease but which I now believe is bleach burn and I am trying to salvage as many plants as I can but I have 3 good plants bought from a garden centre and they have no flowers or fruit yet they are about five feet tall..everybody tells me its the bleach??.I cannot recall if they ever had flowers.....these plants are inside so I am going to try and scoop the soil around the root growth by hand and bag it ....I have to do this to lighten the growing drum so as I can lift it ...then I will try to get it out into my greenhouse put the soil back in and see what happens out there... Hopefully I can get help to hold the staking steady doing this???
Actually Last night I took the soil out from around the roots of one of my original Tasty Toms which had basicly died ......and I have just thought of this......maybe I can do the same to my healthy plants IE scoop out most of the soil so the root area is free ...wrap the root area and lift it out of the drum stake and all ..lie it on a plank of wood for support .and take it outside.....then take the drum out and put the plant and soil back in...They do this with trees ...I actually think this should work and will minimise the risk of damage....

Cheers Ron

[Cole_Robbie]

I wouldn't want bleach to drip into the media of a potted plant. Maybe other people on here have that happen without problems, I don't know. But the bleach is like a nuclear weapon to everything fungal/bacteria that is alive in your media. In a healthy plant, you will have a positive balance, with more of the good aerobic bacteria than the bad anaerobic. Bleach would wipe that all clean and make life start over again. It is possible to create a pythium problem in potted plants by bleaching plant media.

[murihikukid]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

I wouldn't want bleach to drip into the media of a potted plant. Maybe other people on here have that happen without problems, I don't know. But the bleach is like a nuclear weapon to everything fungal/bacteria that is alive in your media. In a healthy plant, you will have a positive balance, with more of the good aerobic bacteria than the bad anaerobic. Bleach would wipe that all clean and make life start over again. It is possible to create a pythium problem in potted plants by bleaching plant media.

Thanks ,,i was pretty aggressive with my spray making sure both top and bottom were done so I know now??? anything I could have done wrong I DID IT??? I also recall that I may have sprayed on a day that was extraordinary hot which would not have helped ...As I am now removing early plants I am taking note of the root system .As you are probably well aware I basicly know very little but I wonder if my plants have a poor root system and if this is a result coming from my seedling stage not being done right...
I recall prior to last season I read about tea bags somewhere ...so I put some in a grow bag...All my plants were in grow bags with underwatering and they got really bad diseases ...The result of over watering and underwatering depending on what expert I asked down here...
Anyway when the season finished I cut the stems a few inches above the soil line and got rid of the stems and then a couple of months later I went out and pulled the stem and roots out prior to barreling the soil...They all came out easily apart from one and I had to cut the bag open ..To my surprise it looked like it had a massive root structure that filled the bag and then i saw these things in the soil and realised this was the sole recipitent of my tea bags...

So I have planted one more tomato this season in a mix with tea bags and written it on a pottle...just to see what happens...

Cheers Ron

[b54red]

Originally Posted by murihikukid

Bill..Thanks for your comprehensive reply ...Let me assure you I bought my bleach from a cleaning company that bottles their own from a drum and it has no additives ..Thats why I never bought from a supermarket as bleaches available there have all sorts of things in it and very few have the percentage on the label ....I ended up with what I thought was a disease but which I now believe is bleach burn and I am trying to salvage as many plants as I can but I have 3 good plants bought from a garden centre and they have no flowers or fruit yet they are about five feet tall..everybody tells me its the bleach??.I cannot recall if they ever had flowers.....these plants are inside so I am going to try and scoop the soil around the root growth by hand and bag it ....I have to do this to lighten the growing drum so as I can lift it ...then I will try to get it out into my greenhouse put the soil back in and see what happens out there... Hopefully I can get help to hold the staking steady doing this???
Actually Last night I took the soil out from around the roots of one of my original Tasty Toms which had basicly died ......and I have just thought of this......maybe I can do the same to my healthy plants IE scoop out most of the soil so the root area is free ...wrap the root area and lift it out of the drum stake and all ..lie it on a plank of wood for support .and take it outside.....then take the drum out and put the plant and soil back in...They do this with trees ...I actually think this should work and will minimise the risk of damage....

Cheers Ron

As someone who started out experimenting with a bleach mix many years ago with a solution 1 part bleach to 4 parts water using a 5.5% strength bleach I know all about burning a plant with bleach.

Bleach burn manifests in a couple of ways. The most common is a slight burn where the mix puddled on the leaf causing a slight burn or discoloration in that spot. This is usually not a problem. Another is a slight browning on the edges of the leaves where the mixture drips and holds so more of the mixture is exposed to this area. The worst is when you see new growth burned. This can lead to plant death but it usually takes quite a strong mix to do this. If your new growth is fine then you don't have serious bleach burn on a plant. If only older leaves are hurt then it is probably the bleach mix doing its job by killing off disease and in the process the diseased leaves die back or shrivel.

I can tell you from years and years of using bleach to fight diseases on my plants that used with proper care and in proper dilutions it is very effective in knocking back many diseases that affect tomato plants but it isn't a miracle cure. The biggest problem most people have with using it is using it too late. It can get rid of a lot of problems but if the disease has gotten too far advanced then the plant will just die. I live in an area plagued with foliage diseases of all kinds and the weather to encourage their growth so I use fungicides like Daconil and copper as preventive measures. Despite regular use of those fungicides diseases still crop up with regularity here and that is where the bleach mix comes in. When used early enough it can frequently stop some diseases immediately and slow many others drastically where most fungicides don't work once the disease has already started to manifest its symptoms. I have used it on seedlings only a few inches tall to plants 20 feet long and usually with success but not always. I have made mistakes using a cheap bleach that wasn't the strength on the label, I have measured wrong, and I have applied it in the middle of the day and had some bad experiences from those mistakes; but the worst mistake I have made is waiting too long to use it. This is a mistake I still sometimes find myself making because of my natural tendency to procrastinate.

A little bleach mix landing on the soil mix will do no harm as it oxidizes immediately unless you are talking about a soaking amount which can penetrate deep wetting much of the growing media. The main affect of bleach is very short lived as it oxidizes so fast. I have even used it to push back fusarium in planting spots in my garden but it only slows it down for a few weeks after a soaking treatment. The results were just too short lived to be worth the trouble or the possible bad affects it might have on the soil long term. Usually after treating a spot worms would be back in the spot within a week or two and fusarium wouldn't be far behind. The trouble with using bleach as a soil sterilizer is that it doesn't distinguish between good and bad organisms.


I can not tell from the pictures you posted whether you burned your plants or had some other problem. There are so many things that can go wrong with tomato plants such as over watering, under watering, bad growing media, bad ph of growing media, over fertilizing, under fertilizing, not enough good light, pests of all kinds, diseases of all kinds, soil born illnesses, and temperature problems. Eventually you will learn with a bit of persistence to recognize many of these problems before they get too bad and correct many where possible. Frequently you will do the wrong thing at the wrong time but you gradually learn a bit from each experience and that will eventually lead to more success and consistency if you can hang on that long.

Bill

Originally Posted by joseph

To me, this looks like environmental damage. Due perhaps to taking the plants from a high humidity, low light, calm, indoor environment to a drier, outside, windy, sunlit environment.

I concur, Joseph.

To me, they also look like the nitrogen-potassium levels are imbalanced in favor of nitrogen (which isn't altogether uncommon). I would give them some potassium (not a full NPK fertilizer; just potassium). It should help the plants to be more vigorous, and it should make the stems and leaves a lot stronger (you shouldn't need to be tying them up at that size, if they have enough potassium and sunlight, but if they already need to be tied up, then potassium probably won't change that, although it will make the stems notably stronger fast).

Sudden changes in sunlight and too much nitrogen vs potassium can cause symptoms similar to transplant shock. Root rot could cause the same symptoms.

However, to me, they also just look like they've been out of real soil and unfiltered sunlight too long. I wouldn't be worried about most of them too much, honestly, unless you're planning to keep them in containers (then I would worry about your soil). Some extra potassium (e.g. potassium sulfate) should help them to survive the transplant to the ground better, if you're going to plant them outside of containers. Transplanting them when the sun isn't out (hours away from that time) should be best, as the plants may need time to adapt to the soil, and the root damage they've sustained, before the sun hits them.

I don't think cold nights are the issue here, since they'd probably be more stout (less in need of tying up) if that were the case. I would suspect the opposite were responsible (constant, warm to temperate, moist conditions).

There could be some pythium at hand, but I don't see any *definite* signs that it's there (signs of the disease, yes, but those signs could be caused by all kinds of things instead of pythium). The stems will likely start to wither (and/or look kind of moldy), starting from the bottom or so, if it has pythium. Whether or not, though, potassium should help there. It may not eliminate the pythium if it has taken hold, but it should help the plants to grow much better in the face of it (as should being outside).

I wouldn't rule out the possibility of spider mites also being present (given the look of a couple of those leaves in the fourth picture) if you have them in that area, either. They can be invisible and cause general stress to plants. They shouldn't bother the tomatoes as much outside, either, unless the plants are suffering otherwise. I have big issues with spider mites outside with lots of stuff (but they usually only bother the tomatoes if they're indoors or if the tomatoes are next to spider-mite infested plants for a good while—of if they're stunted, say by too high of a soil pH).

[murihikukid]

shule1...Thanks for your comprehensive posting....I have to explain here that some plants I grew myself from cuttings the later I propagated seeds ...then when things went bad I went to a garden centre where I was able to buy really cheap young plants but some were not in the best condition as it was their final plants for the season ...as well I planted a complete propagator (40cells) of new seeds as a further backup so I now have tomatoes everywhere....They are all in pots...Thats all I have and I purchase my soil...

I am going to disregard the bleach treatment cause i blame myself and anyway I think I have serious other problems.....While moving my indoor fully grown plants (to get them outside I had to scoop out a lot of soil from their growing drum so as I could lift them) and I had a chance to see the root system on each....The first one I did had a root area that was hardly bigger than a golf ball ...at least it was producing tomatoes...although later plants i moved had better root systems ...Then the full extent of how spindly the main stems were when I moved them ....I was not really successful and caused damage as I had no one to help me but I will just have to wait and see what happens....

So I had now realised that the soil might have a problem so I did a Ph reading on a number of pots and drums.and they were mostly 5.0 and one was 4.5 .....This was a new soil mix of basicly 2 parts a a commercial tomato mix /2 parts of a 2013 tomato mix that I barreled when the season finiashed/2 parts of peat moss w blood and bone in it and perlite til I ran out and at $75 a bag I decided I could not afford it... ALL my soil from my winter and new plants has been put into a big plastic barrel where hopefully later it can be used again...

So the Ph surprised me ....I checked Google ..Yes Dolomite Lime ..I have plenty of that ...Ground Oyster Shell Lime ..I have plenty of that but I was looking for something that could raise my PH as soon as possible...POtassium Carbonate?? Is that Pot Ash ..I have some but not suitable for containers written on it ...Baking Soda I have that and I have two bags of Bark Chips purchased from a local gardening centre...I have various Tomato Foods as well>>.

I think I have to try and get my soil up to 6.5 as soon as possible but the potting is all done ..the plants are all out in my greenhouse and unfortunately its not quite finished and today was one of the worst days this year with cold/wind/rain and hail and its summer?? So I am not worried about the seasons ..It may well be our summer is 2 months late this year or perhaps we had it 4 months ago when the weather was quite extraordinary for the time of year it was..

Now when the plants were inside I noted spider webs on the ceiling full of small black insects yet one really never noticed them ...I presume they flew around and I have only seen one leaf that looked to me like it had been chewed on...

Thats about it ....I feel my priority is to raise my PH which hopefully will thicken the stems etc of my youngsters ......ALL the plants when potted were put in a hole sprinkled with Dolomite Lime /Oyster Shell Lime and a Tricoderma Powder fungicide......Today on advice I gave them a slight watering with SeaSol a seaweed extract ....I do not know if it will raise the Ph.....Baking soda is the only thing left ....I have just run out of ideas....

Cheers Ron

Wood ash should raise the pH easily (and supply potassium/calcium, though I've never tried it in containers), as should such as basalt rockdust and probably Azomite. Lime would certainly add calcium and raise the pH. I imagine eggshells would, too. Be careful. It's a lot easier to raise the pH than to lower it. You don't want it too high.

I would just take it easy and make sure the plants have enough potassium, for now (to compensate for the high nitrogen and to help the roots). That's me, though. Every gardener is different, but be careful not to try too hard to help your plants. More isn't always better.

I could have been wrong about the cold I mentioned not seeming to be part of the problem. Something that might help for both the cold and the light/air is a humidity dome to block the UV rays, help the plant with moisture, protect it from wind, etc. It might not be necessary, but you might experiment with milk jugs with the bottoms cut off on the smaller plants (throw the cap away, as they need air). You could remove it after they get stronger. I wouldn't do it on every plant, though, just in case. You have enough plants where you might try different approaches on different plants to see which ones work better.

I would not recommend using baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) on plants. It has sodium in it. It's a lot like putting salt in your soil. (Granted, sea minerals can be good, if used properly.) Sodium does have a place, but you don't need much in your soil. Adding it is generally not a good thing. I would also advise against bleach, though I've never tried it on plants.