A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum The Tomato Forum black spots on yellowing leaves

...on all of the 15 tomato plants I have out in a field and 3 more close to the house in large pots. They are San Marzano Plums and Better Boys.

The damage began at the lower leaves and is moving up. Some of the worst affected plants are 1/3 defoliated already. The tomatoes themselves are fine so far except for some occasional bird pecks and bug problems.

We did get late blight last year from some big box store tomatoes (which got to our potoes too), but this problem looks different. The soil in the pots is not from out there but is from a compost pile about 500' away.

I have a couple of photos here:
http://how0909.freeshell.org/garden/problems.html

Anybody know what that is?
I have a feeling I will not be able to do anything about this crop BUT I'm interested any ideas y'all might have.

I will attach a link that might help. This is one of the first sites I go to when I have disease issues. The Cornell site is also another good one. Jay

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publications/tomatoproblemsolver/leaf/

That IS a nice site. Thanks

They have the nice small id picture and the larger if desired.
I had seen Cornell's page , it is nice too.
This morning I went to a Good local Gardening/Feed store where
they had a large book with really nice photos as well.

The more I see I am now thinking it's the Septoria Fungus.
I have the yellow dot in the brown spots which is pretty distinctive.

I got some copper to give it an organic try.
I gave 'em a coat this morning even though it is drizzly to hopefully kill spores.
When it dries up I'll probably do another coat.

Is there a way to post a photo here for reference?

Well it's been two weeks and while the copper has not eradicated the problem (septoria or early blight) it is keeping the problem somewhat under control.
It still progresses but at a much slower rate.
It seems that if I don't follow even a light rain with a fresh coat of the copper I get a sudden acceleration of the disease.
I am using the highest recommended rate: 4 oz per gallon and distriputing that over about 15 plants.
It has been a little cooler for the past week and that may have helped a little too. Everything out there looks happier.

The tomatoes themselves are not effected by the disease except that I think their developement and ripening has been slowed. Looks like maybe 5% of the plumb tomatoes may never turn red, but still I have picked about 10 gallons of ones that have ripened and have cooked them down into about as many quarts. The first of the better boys are just starting to ripen.

So I don't know, 10's of hours of time and $15 of copper for 2-3 gallons of sauce.
Is it worth it?
Ask me this winter when I'm sitting down to a bowl of freshly cooked pasta and sauce.
That is all...

Sorry, I mispoke.
I am using maximum rate of 2oz per gallon of the
Bonide Copper Fungicide Concentrate
10% Copper Octanoate (copper soap)
(Metallic copper eqivalent 1.8%)