How to Treat Tomato Wilt

Wilt Causes and Treatment

• 1

  Water your plants once a week, thoroughly. Tomato plants require an inch of water a week under normal conditions and a bit more during hot, dry months. Water around the base of the plant only, to avoid mold, fungus growth and burning on the leaves. If you have an overhead sprinkler, water your plants in the morning to avoid foliar disease problems.

• 2

  Remove plants that show signs of verticillium and fusarium, a soil-borne disease that invades the root tissue and causes vascular wilt. Plants will not survive and can spread the disease to other tomato plants. The plant will at first wilt in the daytime, and recover in the evening, but will soon show yellowing leaves and continue to wilt for longer periods. There is no cure except to quickly remove and destroy infected plants, and rotate tomato crops in the future, since pathogen often remains in the soil.

• 3

  Remove and destroy plants that present with browning foliage, stunted growth and wilting. The plant is likely infected with the tomato spotted wilt virus and will die. Currently, no cure or effective preventative measure against the virus is known.

• 4

  Cut or mow tall grassy and weedy areas around your tomato plants to prevent the infestation of the stalk borer caterpillar. Stalk borers move from tall grassy areas and attack tomato plants by boring into the stalks. The plants will often wilt and die. Remove visible stalk borer caterpillars and pull up tomato plants that die. Insecticides will be completely ineffective, since the larva is inside the stem. Tomato plants will sometimes survive their attack.

• 5

  Identify nearby trees. If a walnut tree is nearby, the plant may suffer wilt from walnut toxicity, due to the presence of the juglone, a toxic material produced by the walnut tree. Remove the tomato plants from the soil and replant in containers with commercial soil. There is a chance your plant could recover, if you deal with the problem quickly enough.