What is Ailing this Plant

[velikipop]

The plant is Monomak's Hat planted in a ten gallon pot. I noticed that it was wilted two days ago and gave it a good watering. It bounced back but this morning was wilted again. I gave it a good watering again, feeding and some epsom salts and it is still wilted. Could this be some sort of wilt? I did the test of putting a cutting in water and no white sap came out. The leaves have some yellowing but no more than other plants. I'm stumped. Any help would be appreciated

[PaulF]

My guess is the pot is not big enough for the plant size and it is not getting enough moisture especially if the soil has gotten hard and porous enough for the water to run right through with little or no retention. I can't see the pot or the size, but the plant looks healthy enough, just thirsty. I would say put a reservoir under the pot so the water will wick into the container. It may also need a bit of fertilizer to replace the nutrients lost in the water flushing through. Good luck.

[dice]

Verticillium? I have a couple of plants that look like that.
Both are in homemade self-watering containers with loose
planting mix and plenty of water. Symptoms first turned up
after a very gusty, windy day, so I thought it was something
that blew in on the wind (allelopathic pollen, someone spraying
something on another block, etc).

One odd thing was that one of them is a small determinate
in a self-watering container along with a New Yorker plant.
The New Yorker showed the symptoms at first, but after refilling
the water reservoir in the container, it perked right up and
looks normal and healthy now, while the other one stayed
wilted. New Yorker has verticillium tolerance, while
any tolerances of the wilted one are unknown, which is
why I suspected verticillium wilt as the cause. (No sap
from the stems here, either, that you get with bacterial
wilt. Verticillium likes the cool weather we had in early
summer, too.)

The other plant is a Black Cherry in an 18-gal container
by itself, with lots of root space, loose soil, abundant water,
etc. There is an odd aspect to that one, too, in that some new
branches are growing out below where I pruned off wilted
foliage, and they look normal and healthy, while any leaves
that have shown any of the wilt simply never recover. Misting
them will slow it down, but not by much.

It is as if the affliction is "branch specific", and while it
can affect most of a plant, it does not seem to be completely
systemic.

Edit:
One other thing: the leaves don't turn yellow. They simply dry
up while remaining green.

[velikipop]

Paul and Dice,

Thanks for your responses. I've tried what Paul has suggested but the plant still looks weak. Dice, your analysis seems to fit. But curiously enough the plants near by and beside it in smaller pots are fine. I'll give it a couple more days before I get rid of it.

Alex

[dice]

But curiously enough the plants near by and beside it in smaller pots are fine.

I saw that, too. The Black Cherry and the little wilted
determinate in the container with the New Yorker were
scattered among a few other self-watering containers
and right next to a row in a raised bed that showed no
symptoms at all. That made a wind-borne pathogen less
probable, and showing up immediately after a gusty day
was perhaps just coincidence.

I tried spraying them with some dissolved aspirin (salicylic acid)
in a weak molasses and humic acid solution. The wilted foliage
did not recover. Whether that helped the plants at all I do
not have enough information to say.

(For the technically inclined with some knowledge of plant
biochemistry, a summary on plant immune system responses:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture05286.html
)

[bcday]

If it is verticillium, you won't be able to use the potting mix in that container for tomatoes or any other susceptible plants for a long time. Verticillium will overwinter in the soil and survive for years even without a host plant being present. Verticillium also infects nearly 200 other species of plants, including even some trees, so if you discard the container mix be careful where you dump it -- you don't want to spread it to a part of your garden that isn't infected.

Dice, I think the reason the symptoms showed up after an especially windy day is that the wind increases the rate at which the leaves lose water, while the verticillium clogs up the "plumbing" of the affected branches so that less water is getting through. Foliage that may have been getting just barely enough water for normal conditions would not get enough to make up for the increased water loss caused by the wind.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardand...t-tom-pot.html

[dice]

Foliage that may have been getting just barely enough water for normal conditions would not get enough to make up for the increased water loss caused by the wind.

That makes sense to me.

I'll have to see if I can find some biocontrol organism that eats
verticillium.

The container mix (compost and bagged stuff) had packed down
after a rain, and I had bolstered it on top with bagged
composted steer manure (composted wood waste, mainly) and
alfalfa from a bale, so that rain water would run off of the
plastic mulch and over the sides. The verticillium may have
come in with the alfalfa, or some kind of bug may have brought
it. (Five containers have the few inches of alfalfa on top, but
only two have the wilt.)

[dice]

I did some Googling for biocontrols for verticillium. There
was a high-chitinase-producing organism mentioned,
streptomyces plicatus, that repressed spore germination
and development of fusarium, verticillium, and alternaria
( http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=13432886 ),
but I did not find any commercial biocontrol preparations
that include it. There were a couple of fungi, trichoderma
viridae and trichoderma harziana, mentioned in other
studies (a lot of sifting to find the information re: verticillium)
that reported some success in repressing verticillium when
found in or added to mature composts.

Perhaps more promising is information from China on using
plant extracts (water or alcohol extracts, I presume) to
repress either mycelial growth or spore reproduction
of verticillium:

http://www.find-health-articles.com/...albo-atrum.htm

A bacterium or micro-fungi organism would in theory be more
efficient (self-reproducing), but it is difficult to look at the soil
and know whether it is still there and alive a few weeks after
inoculating with the organism. A plant extract is more expensive
if you have to grow the plant and then make the extract (or buy
it ready-made), but it does not have to outcompete other soil
organisms to work. That is like fumigating with chemicals, only
in this case the chemicals are organic extracts from plants and
trees. (Anyone have a Chinese magnolia in their yard, for
example?)

There might be some possibilities for growing some of these
plants in and around verticillium invested plots, too. Especially
the Chinese Wild Ginger (asarum sieboldii) might be handy
in no-till plots. It grows in moist, forest soils in winter to
early spring and likes shade. The foliage dies off in the summer
heat, and it goes dormant. Permanently establishing it in no-till
beds where tall winter cover crops like winter rye, rye+vetch,
oats, field peas, winter wheat, etc are grown may give it the
shade it needs in spring, and it may repress verticillium
wherever its roots reach (assuming that whatever verticillium
finds unfriendly in it is found in and around the roots and not
just in the foliage). Even if the unknown anti-verticillium
substance is only in the foliage, that foliage is dead and
decaying in the mulch by summer.

Especially interesting is that extracts of various allium species
were found to repress verticillium mycelium growth more than
50%. That would include onions, garlic, chives, garlic chives,
and various ornamental alliums, any of which could cohabit with
tomatoes in containers and garden beds and could also be used
to make extracts for a soil drench. (Some bugs don't like
alliums, either, a fringe benefit.)

Edit:
PS: Beats the hell out of a 6 year rotation with grains and grasses
in between if you don't have acres of land to grow tomatoes on.