The Tale of the Cherry Tomato Plant Who Would Not Die

[tree_hugger]

A few years back my husband tried to "help" my vegetable garden by throwing his food scraps out of the kitchen window onto the garden, for "compost". :rolleyes By coincidence, or not, the vegetable garden pretty much failed that year, but an amzazing thing did happen - this tiny little cherry tomato plant started to sprout, about two metres away from the garden and across a cement path.

Over the years my husband tried so hard to kill this plant, he tried to prune it to death over and over again, but now he is gone and the plant has prevailed! :dash

Here she is:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v409/KathleenRay/Picture005.jpg

And, not only has she prevailed, but she is having babies, all the way over the otherside of the back yard. :heart

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v409/KathleenRay/Picture011.jpg

However, the plant does have some kind of illness, and I am hoping a GCM greenthumb might be able to help. I *think* it is leaf-curl, whatever that is (I saw a bottle of something for leaf-curl at the hardware shop). I wonder if it is fungus related. There are no insects, creepy crawlys, slugs or snails that I can see.

It starts off like this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v409/KathleenRay/Picture010.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v409/KathleenRay/Picture008.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v409/KathleenRay/Picture007.jpg

And ends up like this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v409/KathleenRay/Picture009.jpg

but generally doesn't seem to effect the overall health of the plant. There is still lots of fruit. I don't want to use chemicals because my children like to eat the fruit straight off the plant.

Any ideas? Thanks for looking. :heart

[snlmama]

Have you looked *very* closely for insects? Spider mites and aphids are tiny, almost microscopic, and easy to miss. Is there any "webbing" around the plants. The picture on first glance looks like it's spider mites to me. I usually buy lady bugs and praying mantids to take care of bug issues, but you can also buy a spray for it.
If you look really closely and still don't see bugs or webbing my only other thought is that my tomatoes tend to wilt like that toward the end of summer and honestly I think it's just the heat and stress. They still produce so I just try to give them lots of water. :shrug But, I don't think it's hot enough for that just yet.
If you have a local garden shop nearby you could take a couple of leaves in and they could probably tell you what it is. :)

[Meli]

If you look really closely and still don't see bugs or webbing my only other thought is that my tomatoes tend to wilt like that toward the end of summer and honestly I think it's just the heat and stress. They still produce so I just try to give them lots of water. :shrug But, I don't think it's hot enough for that just yet.


I was thinking the same thing (in Australia we have come to the end of summer), my tomato plant did that over February, wilted, died off gradually, all while producing a lot of fruit.

We have about 5 rogue tomato plants along under the edge of our deck at the moment, still going strong despite the cooler weather, thanks to the kids thinking our dog might like their left over tomato!!