Curling Tomato Leaves

I'm sad tonight.  Sad because I had to pull up one of J.'s beloved Early Girl tomato plants.  It has been giving us so many beautiful tomatoes for the last 2 weeks that our counter is covered with them.  But, unfortunately, it has been feeling poorly for that long as well.

It all started with yellowing leaves at the bottom of the plant almost two weeks ago and I didn't think anything of it.  We've had such weird weather and it's not uncommon for the bottom leaves on a tomato to yellow or die off from stress or too much watering.  The other tomatoes seemed fine.

Then the bottom leaves started to curl a little on the edges.  Again, not a big deal.  Tomato leaves will often curl in response to stress - either too much water, not enough water, too hot, too cool.  Yep, it's not always easy to diagnose what a tomato patient is trying to tell you and they don't habla English.

Despite my wishing and praying, the curling progressed up the plant and the curls got tighter until the leaves were completely rolled like a cigarette.  (Someone suggested that I might smoke those leaves, but I'm not sure that's a good idea since tomatoes are part of the nightshade family.)  At this point, the plant appeared to be shrinking and the top growth was stunted.  There were tons of tomatoes that were ripening, but no new flowers.  Other than the curling, there were no spots on the leaves.   However, some of them were starting to show a green and yellow mottling.  Had there been spots, I might have guessed a fungal problem.

That's my poor tomato plant on the left and it's healthy neighbor on the right.  They were literally side by side.  Since the other plant didn't seem to have any of the curling or stunted growth, I was pretty certain that this wasn't environmental.  Several thorough searches turned up no evidence of bugs, mildew or anything else out of the ordinary.  With all those ripening tomatoes, I wasn't sure what to do.  So I turned to the Great Google. 

Here are a couple of great sources that I found along the way that help with diagnosing tomato problems:

Tomato Leaves Rolling?

K-State University's Tomato Leaf and Fruit Diseases and Disorders (with pics!)

K-State University's Common Plant Diseases Compendium

Cornell Vegetable MD Online

What I found was horrific and disappointing to say the least.  This is either Tomato Leaf Curl Virus or Tomato Mosaic Virus or Curly Top Virus.  There is no treatment or remedy for either one of them.  It's a virus that is transmitted via insects or even a gardener's touch.  If you touch an infected plant and then a healthy one, you can transmit it.  Ugh! 

So I scurried out to the garden and ripped it out and bagged it in a trashbag to avoid spreading the infection.  And I am praying that my heirloom Cherokee Purples and Rutgers aren't infected.  No variety of tomato is resistant to this virus.  I will be watching them like a hawk, that's for sure.

I'm sharing this post as part of A Rural Thursday, Farm Fresh Friday, Garden Life Linkup, and Farmgirl Friday.  Clicky to see what other folks are up to!