Why do some of my tomatoes start to look limp and then completely die
by whitexeno
Why do some of my tomatoes start to look limp and then completely die
by whitexeno
5 Comments
I have 3 plants that are very limp looking, I have another 7 that are doing great with no issues. I water them all the same. I am in zone 9a and water about every other day. Watering more doesn’t seem to make a difference. They were all planted with espoma starter fertilizer about 2 months ago and every 2 weeks I water with miracle grow.
Sounds like bacterial wilt
In my experience, sudden tomato wilting usually means the plant isn’t taking up water properly for one reason or another even if youre watering regularly.
If it only happens on hot afternoons and the plant perks back up at night or in the morning, that can be pretty normal heat stress. In that case, some afternoon shade can help a lot especially during heat waves.
But if you have plants that wilt and keeps getting worse, I’d check the base of the stem and the roots. Sometimes overwatering or bad drainage causes rot near the crown/root area, and the plant can look fine until suddenly it can’t move enough H2O anymore. Gently dig around the base and look for mushy tissue, missing chunks of stem, or rotting roots.
Overfertilizing can also cause this. It can burn roots and too much fertilizer salt in the soil can make it harder for the plant to pull in water.
So look at three things: heat stress, root/stem rot from too much moisture, and possible fertilizer burn. If it perks back up daily, it’s probably heat. If it stays limp and crashes fast, I suspect root issues.
There are a variety of wilting diseases that can affect tomatoes. All of them are generally fatal. If you determine your plants have them you should remove them and get them away from your healthy plants ASAP. As previously recommended, check if they perk up at night. If not, get them out of there quickly.
Bacterial Wilt is due to bacteria causing the flow of fluids and nutrients to diminish and quickly, over a week or so, shut down completely. The symptoms noticed first is the plant seems to wilt in the afternoon and recover overnight. But quickly this turns into the plant wilting and dying as the flow stops completely. This is due to a bacteria in the soil and while it can be treated at considerable expense there is a simple solution. Grow your plants in fabric pots I have bacterial wilt bacteria in my soil and for 5 years now I haven’t had a single tomato plant die from BW. Get 10 gallon cloth bags, load each up with 2 cubic feet of raised bed soil. I’m in zone 9B.