How Do You Grow Tomatoes When Your Soil Harbors Fusarium Or Verticillium Wilt Fungus?
There is no tomato as delicious as a freshly picked, vine-ripened tomato from the backyard. But the pleasure of growing your own tomatoes may be mitigated when your tomato plants are infected with Fusarium or Verticillium wilt. There are many diseases of tomatoes, such as early blight, leaf spot and anthracnose. But the wilt diseases, Fusarium and Verticillium wilt may be the most devastating. Both wilts have similar symptoms. At first the lower leaves wilt, turn yellow and die. In many cases, a single shoot or one side of the tomato plant is affected before the whole plant wilts. Symptoms on one side only, indicate Fusarium wilt. To distinguish between the two wilts, the stems of the plants should be sliced open. In plants affected by Fusarium wilt, dark chocolate-brown streaks run lengthwise through the stem. Verticillium wilt causes much lighter discoloration of the stem. Fusarium wilt generally occurs in midsummer when soil temperatures are high, whereas Verticillium wilt, usually,
