Yellowy Tomato Transplants

[ecocheapomom]

We recently transplanted four different varieties of tomatos purchsed at a local nursery. They don't seem to be doing well and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. This is only our second year of doing a garden and tomatos are our most important crop. Here are some of the facts:

- We bought them and before we could get them in the ground we got several days of rain during which they were in their flats in the garden
- they are in raised beds
-they were beginning to yellow a bit before we planted them and this has continued to get worse
-they are yellowing from the bottom up
-some of the leaves also have brown spots and some of the leaves that are stiil green are getting a dark tint to them
-only the most top leaves are really green
-some of the lowest and most yellow leaves have curled up and we have taken off the worst ones
-I spraid with an organic insecticide/fungicide, but it hasn't seemed to help

I don't know if I should pull them all out and get new ones. Wait and see if they get better. Or what. The rest of the garden is doing very well. Both the transplants and what we put in from seed. Thanks for any info!

 

[digitS']

Welcome to The Easy Garden !

I'm going to just take some guesses:

Plant starts often spend too long in their containers. By the time they get to the garden, they are root bound and the potting soil is completely depleted of nutrients.

That soil may not have had any nutrients in the first place. Planting medium is often "soil-less" and nutrients are supplied in the irrigation water. Then they go to the garden centers/supermarkets where they get . . . water/no nutrients.

Most plants benefit from tearing the root ball that's developed when they are transplanted. It can take a good long time for roots to stop growing in a circle even if there's open ground around the plant.

Now that you've tried the insecticide (you really should see some sign of insects before doing that ), why don't you try spraying a foliar fertilizer. Or, just get some dry fertilizer on top those roots and wash it into the ground a little.

Your tomatoes may just be starving for nitrogen. That's an important part of chlorophyll and that's what makes a green plant, green and allows it to grow.

Steve

 

[Catalina]

You could try some bone meal sprinkled around the stem.

I always plant my tomatoes with bone meal sprinkled in the hole.

 

[Greenthumb18]

You could try some bone meal sprinkled around the stem.

I always plant my tomatoes with bone meal sprinkled in the hole.

I actually tried that on some of my tomatoes that were yellow their looking better now.
So i would recommend the bonemeal.

 

[me&thegals]

I agree that the yellow sounds like a nitrogen deficiency, maybe depleted from excess water and being rootbound. Don't know about the rest, but maybe the nutrient imbalance is leaving it a bit more vulnerable to other issues. Good luck! My raspberries (in sand) looked like this earlier. I dosed them with a mixture of bone meal, dried blood and wood stove ashes. Hoping mine turn around, too.

 

[FarmerDenise]

The fact that the top most leaves are green is an indicator that they have had nutrient deficiency. The green leaves probably started growing after you put the plants in the ground. Give them another week and they'll start looking better. Some of ours looked a bit yellow too, because they were in their pots too long. Usually two weeks after planting them in the ground you can't tell them apart from the ones that weren't yellow.

 

[ecocheapomom]

Thanks for all the info. Gardening is such a learning process! I gave them some bonemeal and also mulched around them with straw. Our Cooperative Extensin thought it might be a fungus and suggested the mulch. Now if the temp. would get above 60 degrees I might be able to see if we are getting anywhere. The rest of the garden is doing awesome though and we enjoyed our own strawberries for breakfast this morning and some amazing radishes with dinner!