"Willow" writes:
I have a 6ft cherry(?) tomato plant that, although covered in fruit at
various stages of ripeness, all of it's leaves have died. This plant
receives a deep soaking with a sprinkler set low right next to the stem &
allowed to spray water for about 15 mins twice a week. It also has a mulch
of rotted grass clippings & horse manure. The plant receives full sun
throughout most of the day. I live in Perth & the soil is the usual grey
sand. Any ideas what is happening to the plant? Is it dying? It was always
supposed to be a temporary plant & I suppose I shouldn't be disappointed
since it self-seeded, but it's still a bit of a let-down since I get a

Willow, the Sydney radio gardening programs have been swamped by people
echoing an identical tragic tale. The disease started on the lower leaves
and progressed relentlessly upwards, right? There has not been a
definitive response, but it seems that the dreaded soil splash fungus
could be to blame--when you watered the plants soil got splashed onto the
leaves and carried with it fungal spores. Spraying with a fungicide can
be tried, but the solution would have been to prevent soil from coming
into contact with the leaves by trimming dragging leaves off and [my
suggestion follows ...] always hosing by gently injecting a trickle of
water into the soil without a sprinkler. Perhaps sheets of newspaper
spread around the plant could cover the soil and mulch, and you could
poke the hose under the paper to water the plant?

I'd have thought the fast maturing time of the cherry tomato would have
allowed it to outpace most diseases that we know eventually take hold of
the longer growing big-size-fruiters like Gross Lisse, etc., but you must
have a particularly virulent fungus there. ;-(

It seems that tomato dust is still necessary, though I would like to hear
of anyone successfully using the bicarbsoda+milk+water mix as a fungicide
spray on their tomatoes.
--
John Savage (for email, replace "ks" with "k" and delete "n")