Garden woes......ideas?

[laurazone5]

My tomatoes are a mess.

Drooping, disease, some have sturdy stems, some have rubbery stems. Very little fruit. Lots of bees doing their job.
Multiple types of toms. All heirloom.
Fertilized, but not near roots.

Bell Peppers are doing the droop too.

Help.

[Deleted]

laurazone5 ,
The spots look like it might be RUST
some pics google picture of rust

Rust Plant Disease: Symptoms, Treatment and Control ...

The drooping looks like lack of water...

[susannah]

Wow, sorry about your garden trouble! If it IS rust, we had rust disease on tomato plants at our previous location. Especially during wet summers. We quickly learned that copper fungicide was our friend - it worked very well.

[laurazone5]

Would rust cause the stems to be weak, and cause the plant not to set fruit?

[Deleted]

laurazone5,
According to this article How to Save Wilted Tomato Plantslink

Tomato plants wilt when they don't receive enough water, but they can also wilt due to overwatering. The plants wilt when their stems and leaves lack water. ... Too much water drowns the roots, and they can't absorb water from the soil so the plants wilt.

[grannyg]

It is just a bad year...our garden is shot as well...tomatoes did poorly...even jalapeno peppers....figs are tiny, will probably not ripen by fall...just had a few squash before the grasshoppers and bugs took over...no strawberries this year...today it is supposed to be 108 degrees, we are all cooking...being told to stay indoors...orka is all leaves, no blooms...and the hoppers are eating habaneo peppers !

[geoinmi]

I would vote for Septoria Leaf Spot. Check the Serenade label, but I think it may at least suppress it so you can get some tomatoes to finish up for this year before the Septoria creeps up the stems. This will carry over on the past year's plant debris and on saved seeds. May I suggeswt watering with soaker lines and not overhead watering....if you are not doing so already?

Cornell is an excellant site for plant diagnostics. They are revamping all their pages--so it might be hard to navigate; blogs.cornell.edu/livegpath/gallery/tomato/tomato-septoria-leaf-spot/

Have you had a spell of hot humid weather with clear sunny skies? Also, with the plant spacing shown, how are the roots doing?

geo

[willowgirl]

All heirloom.

This jumped out at me. One year I tried to grow all heirloom varieties and was disappointed in the results. I suspect some heirlooms are more about the marketing hype than they are about quality of the plants!

Edited to add: Tomato seeds will keep for years. If you want to try an unfamiliar variety, get the seeds, plant a couple of plants and see how they do. Store the rest of the seeds; you can use them the following year if the trial plant(s) perform well; but if they don't, you haven't devoted a lot of garden space to a dud.

[Melissa]

Aug 25, 2020 12:42:41 GMT willowgirl said:

All heirloom.

This jumped out at me. One year I tried to grow all heirloom varieties and was disappointed in the results. I suspect some heirlooms are more about the marketing hype than they are about quality of the plants!

Edited to add: Tomato seeds will keep for years. If you want to try an unfamiliar variety, get the seeds, plant a couple of plants and see how they do. Store the rest of the seeds; you can use them the following year if the trial plant(s) perform well; but if they don't, you haven't devoted a lot of garden space to a dud.

Right- there is a reason for hybrid seeds. 

[ketoriverfarm]

I grow several heirloom tomatoes for fresh eating but for processing for juice, sauce or whole tomatoes the hybrid seed is the way to go.