Timber's advice is excellent but I would like to add some comments.
Recognizing specific tomatoe diseases is quite difficult and is aided by
local experience.
The symptons you describe are common to a number of diseases. My plants (I
live in Victoria, Australia) this year have similar symptons and I believe
it is a virus desease. I sow my own seeds (for the reasons given by Timber)
and I sterilise the soil (all my plants are by necessity grown in containers
so that is easy) with formaldehyde (from the local pharmacy).I grow a bush
variety and a staking variety. At first I removed the affected leaves but
eventually the bush variety (which I grow for an early crop) succumbed but
not before a good crop had been harvested. The staking variety is still
doing fine. The desease attacks the lower leaves and as I progressively
remove these lower leaves and harvest from the lower branches, the plants
keep growing upwards and produce new healthy leaves and healthy fruits. So a
solution is to first do all the things Timber advised and then to grow a
tall staking variety pruned to one stem.
When growing tomatoes during the rainy season in tropical Africa we had
problems with fungal deseases (symptons not unlike your description).
Spraying once a week with an appropriate fungicide before the first symptons
of the desease was effective in preventing fungal dieases.
Some tomatoe varieties are resistant to wilt deseases. Wilt deseases are the
worst and usually result in death of the plant. They may be caused by
bacteria or virus and are carried in the soil but one wilt desease may be
carried by thrips from host plants (not necessarily tomatoes).
Mike Stickney

"Timber" wrote in message
hlink.net...

Without seeing exactly what your plants look like I could be wrong here
but
it sounds to me like you may have Verticillium or Fusarium Wilts. Both of
which are soilborne diseases which cause yellowing and curling of the
leaves, wilting and premature death of the plants. These diseases persist
in gardens where susceptible plants are grown. Once they build up in the
soil, the only practical control is the use of resistant varieties or to
not
plant tomatoes in the same location for at least five years as both are
systemic problems.

More times than not, the culprit enters the garden from the seedling stock
you purchased. This is one reason I never purchase seedlings any longer
and
I dunk all my seeds prior to even thinking about germinating them.

In later phases of this problem it can and normally does start to mottle
the
fruit and cause fruit shape deformation.

Timber
www.timberslodge.net
...a Step Through Time


"Bill" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 03 Feb 2003 09:10:25 +1000, Denise wrote:

Hi There,

I have had a few problems with my tomatoes of late so I thought I
would
query the experts. My first plant's leaf curled vertically and
started
getting yellow spots on the leaves - it hasn't really picked up,
someone
suggested Epsom salts, but I just put some blood and bone down to see
if
it
would pick up.

Anyway, I purchased another plant and now it's leaves are turning over
on
itself - like curling horizontally - it also has some yellowing on the
edges
and brown as well. This is a fairly new patch that has not has
anything
growing in it for 20 years so I am not too concerned if my first go is
not
too great.

I live in Subtropical conditions, and we are still in our summer over
here.
I have not had tomatoes on this part previously.

any suggestions will be greatly appreciative

Denise

Brisbane, Australia

Denise,
Do a web search for "tomato diseases". MANY 'official' sites have
photographs of diseased leaves, stems, root and fruit that will help you
pinpoint the
exact problem and suggest a reasonable tactic for dealing with it. Do
you
smoke tobacco? Some diseases can come from contact with hands that have
had contact with tobacco.

At any rate ... there ARE photos out there. Your assignment this week is
to
find them. :-)

Bill