"Melanie" wrote in message
...
All the leaves on my 3 tumbler tomatoes have turned completely yellow, but
the leaves have not dropped off, nor have they shrivelled, nor have they
dried up. The leaves have turned bright yellow, no mottling, but some of
the leaves do have a few brown spots.

Today I stripped off all the leaves completely as I figured they weren't
of
any use and if it's a disease it might spread.

The 3 plants are in one hanging basket but the basket has not been hung
up;
it's been kept on a greenhouse bench. The soil has been kept constantly
moist (possibly too moist?). None of my other tomato varieties are like
this.

I've put up a scanned image of one of the leaves, if anyone would care to
look and let me know what the problem could be.

I did overdo the fertiliser once, so could it be fertiliser burn? When
the
plants first started to yellow I sprayed them with epsom salts.

Also, there are several small green tomatoes still on the plants so if
these
tomatoes ripen will they still be edible?

The image is at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/melanie.mccluskey/

Many thanks.




In the absence of disease, sounds to me like a mineral deficiency (from what
I've been told). Trouble is, at the moment I can't remember which one! (I
_think_ it's magnesium - I'll refer to this magical ingredient as XXX
below...).

Month or so ago I was in the local garden centre, looking for organic tomato
food. I couldn't find anything organic on the shelves specifically marketed
as tom food, so I looked at the makeup of one of the non-organic tom foods,
it was something like 4-3-8 NPK, i.e. a high potassium fertilizer. Found
an organic fertilizer with a similar makeup.

However, the propriatory tom food had "includes XXX" on the label.

Asked one of the staff about this, and their reply was that yellowing leaves
was a classic sign of this deficiency, and if this happens just use one of
the specific XXX fertilizers to restore the balance. It gets washed out of
the soil due to the large amount of water that toms need.

I'm sure that someone can confirm/deny this...


--
Richard Sampson

email me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk