¨Problem with my tomatoes

[Juan Carlos Narbon]

I have been cultivating tomatoes and they are about 60 days old.  I have noticed that the older and lower leaves are becoming pale and dry.  Also on the back of the leaves there are spots of a white fuzz or down.  The plants overall don´t look very healthy-

What can be done to correct this?

 

[TCLynx]

got any pictures?  What is the growing situation, indoors, outdoors?  How is the light and how is the air flow.  White fuzz sounds like downy mildew and if that is the case doing something to change the pH on the leaves may work.  diluted milk spray or activated worm tea or even dilute baking soda spray.  I don't know the exact recipes for any of these ideas so you might want to do a search to get specifics.

[Juan Carlos Narbon]

 

Hi TC.  I didn´t answer before because I was getting some pictures to show you what is the situation.  Since I first wrote, I have been doing some consulting, and apparently the white fuzz on the back of the leaves is from the white fly.  I had try spraying water with soap on the back of the leaves, but I think it is too early to say if this is working.

[TCLynx]

Looks to me that you may be experiencing some deficiency problems.

[Juan Carlos Narbon]

You mean deficiency in Nitrites and Nitrates?

What would be accepted readings in these two?

[TCLynx]

You want your ammonia and nitrite to both be 0 in a cycled up system

and

Nitrates could be anywhere from 0 up through off the charts and still be ok.  My general rule is if you have a readable level of Nitrates it is probably enough but if the Nitrates read 0 yet the plants are happy, then it is still probably enough.

If the Nitrates are 0 and the plants are showing Nitrogen deficiency then you need more nitrates (which usually means you need the system cycled up and enough filtration to handle more fish and/or higher protein feed.)

 

Not all deficiency is due to lack of nitrate.  Many deficiencies can be taken care of by a dose of seaweed extract or chelated iron or perhaps something else.  You might want to look up different deficiency symptoms and see if your problem looks like any of the pictures or descriptions.

[David Hart]

Hi Juan, here's a link to some pictures of mineral deficiencies....

http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/min-def/list.htm

I believe it's been posted at this site before....I don't remeber who posted it first (?)