TOMATO LEAF CURL - 3 Causes and What to Do When Your Tomato Leaves are Curling Up.

one of the most common issues we face in growing tomatoes is leaf curl in fact i can't even count the number of you who have written in in the past few weeks about this very subject now most of the leaf curl you get is absolutely nothing to worry about in fact it's a good thing but there are a few types of leaf curl that are not only devastating to your plant but can spread throughout the entire garden in this video i'm going to go over the three main causes of leaf curl and what you need to do to either prevent it or take care of it once it happens stay tuned [Music] hey guys i'm brian with california garden tv if you're looking to join an online gardening community that offers tips tricks and support then you're in the right place get started now by clicking subscribe and hit the bell icon so you never miss anything let's get growing so i'm sorry if i look a little bit greasy today we just got back from the beach um it was so awesome to be out in the wide open spaces again uh it was a beautiful day but i'm back here now to film this very important subject that so many of you have been asking about so there are three different causes of tomato leaf curl or tomato roll those are physiological a herbicide drift or residue and viral so let's start with the most common and that is the physiological so the symptoms of physiological leaf curl physiological means it's anything from it's mostly environmental stress heat lack of water sometimes over watering wind dry weather all of those can contribute to tomato leaf curl and typically what you're going to see is the the leaves will stay their same green color they won't change color they might get thick very leathery and you're typically going to see the leaves roll upward those are going to be your symptoms now heat is one of the main causes of tomato leaf roll or curl and like i said you're going to see the leaves rolling up and this is actually a good thing this is to protect the plant from losing too much moisture through evaporation and transpiration of the leaves you know when it's hot and the leaves are open there's a lot of surface area there for evaporation to occur and so what the tomato does in response to that is it curls up and that leaves less surface area for the sun to hit and cause it to lose moisture now a lot of people when they see this their first you know knee-jerk reaction is to run and water their tomatoes and that might actually cause more harm than good this is where the tomato the the finger trick sticking it into the soil a couple inches and seeing what it's like because generally it's not a lack of water in the soil it's just that the plant is losing more water through the leaves than it can pull in through the roots and so it's going to roll up like this now one thing you can do other than just leave it alone is if it's really hot 90 degrees or above and we've talked about this before you can throw some 30 to 50 shade cloth over the plant that might help the leaf roll but it will definitely help keep the plant from dropping its flowers unless it's too hot over a long period of time and then even shade cloth won't help another reason that the tomato leaves might curl upward would be dry conditions windy conditions anywhere anything that's going to cause those those leaves to dry out the tomato is going to wrap up wrap itself up and protect itself from those situations and it's really nothing to worry about another more rare condition is an abundant an overabundance of nitrogen in the plant and in the soil and that will also cause leaf roll but that's a little more rare and most likely isn't the cause now with any of these issues that we've discussed with the leaf roll it is not going to affect the growing condition of the plant it's not going to affect the fruiting other than the extended period above 90 degrees um and you may or may not have leaf roll with that but you definitely will get flour drop but all the other reasons don't even worry about it now another problem that causes leaf curl is herbicide drift and so if you're spraying herbicides somewhere in your garden or if you live near some place that is and some of that residue drifts over onto your tomato plants you're going to see a different kind of leaf curl in that situation what you're going to see is the stem part of the tomato leaf is going to bend down and the leaves are going to cup up on all edges so not only will they be rolling up this way but they'll also be rolling up this way so it's going to look like a cup you're also going to get some probably some discoloration yellowing browning that type of thing but that's only going to affect the leaves that were there during the herbicide drift any leaves that come on after that as long as there's no more herbicides in the area those should be fine now we're going to get into a little bit uh more of the worrisome types of tomato leaf curl and that is the viral ones because once it happens in most cases it's pretty much impossible to to turn around and the plant is pretty much toast now there are hundreds of viruses that can cause your tomato leaves to curl the top three would be curly top the yellow tomato leaf mosaic virus and the yellow curly leaf virus now the most common i would say is the curly top virus and that is you know the top portion of the plant you're going to start to see the leaves curl upward very similar to the physiological curl and they might start to point upward as well the whole leaf there is one way to really kind of see the difference and make sure that you have the physiological issues and not the viral issues and that is watering your plants deeply at night time and then the next morning come out and check them and if they're back to normal then that was probably the physiological issue if they're not then you might have the viral issue probably the curly top virus now in and of itself the curly top virus just because you have it in one plant and even if it's right next to another plant and they're even touching it doesn't mean it's going to spread it to that plant it's a systemic problem that's actually caused by the uh the leaf hopper bug and the leaf hopper if it's already chewed on an infected plant and then chews on an unaffected plant it can give the virus to that plant now if there's already fruit on the plant those fruit might depending on the stage they're at they might continue to ripen if they're early on they may be stunted and they might may ripen prematurely the best thing to do if you have the curly top issue is to get rid of the plant you know because if the leaf hoppers come and bite that plant and bite the plant you have next to it it's going to spread that way so as hard as it is it would be better to ruin one plant than to ruin your whole crop [Music] now there is a way to try to prevent the the virus and that is don't give the leaf hoppers a place where they love to eat and that means they love to eat in the sunshine the bright hot sunshine and so again here's where the shade cloth comes in 30 to 50 percent covering the plant it's only going to protect you from some of the physi physiological issues but the leaf hoppers won't really want to eat in the shade so at least it's a way you can try now another virus that's quite common is the tomato mosaic virus and that causes rolling of the leaves but other symptoms including kind of mottled coloring of leaves small leaves and you're going to see internal browning of the infected fruit now again there's no treatment for this once you have it and i don't know of any preventative measures that you can take it's kind of like it's just luck i mean if you guys if you've heard of something that that can prevent that please share it down below in the comments now unfortunately this is another virus that really can't be controlled once you have it and i don't really know of any way to prevent it so if you do let us know down in the comments um i think it's just kind of luck if you get it you have it and you need to get rid of the plant this is also one of those viruses that lives in the soil for up to two years and so this is one of those reasons i say don't let the water splash from the soil onto the leaves because you're going to spread it that way so a good layer of mulch watering from below is the best way to i guess that is a preventative so the third most common virus is going to be the tomato yellow leaf curl virus that virus causes a range of symptoms that include marginal leaf yellowing upward or downward leaf cupping reduction in leaf size flower or fruit drop and plant stunting now this virus is spread by white fly and the best way to prevent this is to keep the whitefly population in your garden under control by spraying neem oil every week or two and that's going to prevent the spread of white flies and in turn the spread of the virus however once you have the disease you cannot get rid of it and this is another bad one and so what you want to do because those white flies that have infected it can move on to other plants and infect them so take a large black or clear trash bag or a large piece of plastic and wrap the tomato plant in it and then take the the bottom of that bag or the top of the bag i guess the open end and tie it around the tomato trunk at soil level and then cut it off cut the trunk off at soil level let it sit in the sun for a day or two that's going to kill all the white fly in the bag and hopefully contain most of the virus and then definitely start a neem schedule after that now as a side note with all of these viral issues do not add the tomato plant to your compost bin it needs to go in the trash because you don't want to spread this through the compost that you put out next year next season so i hope this answers a lot of your guys's questions that you've had and if you get right on it and try those preventative measures hopefully you won't run into these problems but if you do and they are the bad kind you know what you need to do [Music] thanks for watching guys if you learned something as always please give the video a thumbs up i hope you're subscribed already and give me a comment down below i would appreciate it i do try to read them all and get back to as many as i can and i will see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 894,710

Keywords: tomato leaf curl, tomato leaf curl virus, tomato leaf curl down, tomato leaf curl disease, tomato, leaf curl, tomato leaves curling, tomatoes, gardening, migardener, tomato leaves rolling, organic gardening, growing tomatoes, tomato leaf problems, garden, disease, curl, leaf, tomato leaves starting to curl, curled leaves on tomatoes, tomato blight, how to grow tomatoes, gardening tips, tomato diseases, home garden, tomato plant, curling

Id: KZeEHYn5I0g

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020