Most of my tomato plants have started showing signs of what I think is Cucumber Mosaic Virus
. I have shoestring, fernleaf, and curling leaves. They also have a leathery appearance.
At first I thought this was the plants reacting to being moved into the full sun, but the new growth continues to look like this and there's no signs of it getting better.
All of my plants are heirloom varieties but not all are effected. The varieties in question are:
- Blue Beauty
- Blue Berries
- Dester
- Goldman's Italian American
- Hillbilly Potato Leaf
- Mortgage Lifter (Halladay's strain)
More pictures, and higher resolution, can be seen here.
Update 6/20/14: After talking to a local farmer, and as suggested below, this looks like it may be herbicide damage. Even though we don’t use herbicides that doesn't rule out drift from a neighbor using it.
Another possibility is they could have come in contact with algaecide, another pool chemical, or Simple Green while they were stored on the patio before being planted out in the garden.
Update 7/2/14: I've continued to observe the plants and have noticed the following:
- Overall growth has been stunted, the plants are growing but much slower than normal
- The foliage looks green and healthy aside from being malformed, it’s showing no signs of yellowing, dropping, or black spots
- Buds are continuing to form and show signs of fruit
- On some plants the majority of the buds are turning brown and dropping by the time pea-sized fruit show up
- New top growth is showing signs of being affected, but in most cases it's not as severe as the initial leaves
- New suckers show signs of being affected but not as much as the main plant, and in some cases it’s almost unnoticeable
- New suckers below the affected area (the first 2-3 leaves) show little or no sign of being affected
After posting this I came across some blog posts from someone who had gotten contaminated soil, his plants show similar symptoms as mine. You can read those here, here, and here.
At this point I'm pretty confident that the issue is due to a chemical and not a virus.