Hi. For years, I have grown my tomatoes from seeds, and this year is no different. I have 65 plants that have been doing great. Last week, I repotted them to a bigger size pot. Nothing out of the ordinary...all of them still look fantastic...with the exception of 6 plants. The day after they were put into the new pots, they looked as though you took a pencil and twirled their stems around it. See photo. Curly and drooping stems. I thought they may recover, but its been about 4 or 5 days now and they still look the same. I'm baffled as to why these 6 plants reacted in this fashion while the rest are great... and they were all handled the same. Any ideas at all?

A couple thoughts.

Did you use identical soil in all of the pots? Add any manure? Are those pots located near your fenceline? That vaguely resembles herbicide contamination, either from contaminated manure or drift, although I'd expect the leaves to be contorted as well.

Are the curly plants all the same variety? I grew Apricot Zebra last year, and it had a very similar form. I'd never seen a tomato grow like that, but it was perfectly healthy. Sorry, didn't keep photos of it.

Hi. These plants are still in my basement under grow lights. It will be about a month before they are moved outside to the garden. Yes, the same soil was used on all of them. No manure was added. The variety shown in the photo is a Mountain Rouge, but other varieties are in the 6 that are behaving this way. Yeah, the strangest part to me is that the leaves look unaffected...only the stems have contorted.

Weird. The only other possibilities that comes to mind (besides some disease I don't know about) is that a little extra fertilizer got into those pots, OR they are the furthest from the grow lights and etiolating.

NMoasis said:That vaguely resembles herbicide contamination, either from contaminated manure or drift, although I'd expect the leaves to be contorted as well

Herbicide drift was my first thought, as I've seen this EXACT look in garden tomatoes shortly after a lawn care company sprayed my adjacent lawn with fertilizer and herbicide.
Does the new soil have fertilizer already in it?

While herbicide drift would be difficult to accomplish inside the house, a brief exposure outside, if you were transplanting outside, might have done the "trick". Tomatoes are very susceptible to herbicides.

Obviously, something different happened (is happening) with those several plants and the environment they grow in. Your mission is to discover what that is. IMO, this is a non-biotic problem, not caused by disease or living pests.

Do you save seeds? If so, was the previous plant a hybrid (indicated as an "F1" usually). You can save F1 seeds and might get good plants in following years, but it is more likely the later generations will not grow true to form (as the original plant did).

I tried saving seeds from a "Toadskin" aka "Christmas" melon not realizing the original was an F1 hybrid (apparently all Toadskin melons are sold as F1 hybrids). The resulting plants grew okay but either didn't set fruit or the fruit that was produced was inferior.

Hi. All of my plants this year were started with seeds harvested from tomatoes that I grew last year. The previous year, the seeds were purchased. These 6 plants still look horrible. No signs of improvement. I actually threw 3 of them out this morning. To answer a previous question, the soil I used did not list a fertilizer on the bag. I've used this soil a long time and have been happy with it (Kellogg brand). My other 60 plants still look good. I'm now wondering if something could've been in the pots that I used. They are pots that I've used over and over for years. They were stored in an out building with many other things. Wondering if something could've gotten into the pots and I didn't realize it. Grasping at straws.

There's always a possibility that a few errant seeds got mixed into the batch when packaged, it does happen. Since Zoë had some like that, it's a possibility it's a healthy tomato plant, just not the variety you were expecting. I would keep a few of them just to let them grow and see what happens, and toss them only if they looked diseased.

Similarly, since all your tomato seedlings are from your own seed (and not hand pollinated, I assume), maybe those 6 weird seedlings have some wonky genetics that just didn't match up well. It's a thing that is not uncommon when hybridizers try to cross different species, like currant tomatoes (Solanum pimpenellifolium) and regular tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum). Seeds can have different genetics even if they are from the same tomato fruit.

Hi @nacarter1972
Welcome to NGA! I hope you'll discover the vast array of friendly gardeners and information resources here!

Your tomato plant is exhibiting classic signs of "epinasty". Sounds nasty 😄 But it's fairly benign. Tomatoes develop it so easily that you'll find lots of pictures of tomatoes if you search on "epinasty". It can easily be caused by herbicide drift, as indicated by Ken @kenisaac and Rick @Leftwood but in your case that's unlikely, as they said.

In the case of your plants it could simply have been caused by keeping the soil too wet. They're small plants freshly potted and there's more water being held than they can use. Another possibility is lighting effects but I don't have the impression that's a factor with yours. I've added a couple links below.

Don't throw out your plants! (Yet). It's probably temporary and in any case it's probably not a disease, a pest problem, or contagious. Give them a chance to grow out of it.

The leaves and stems that have already curled will stay curled. They're still functional. When the cause of the epinasty is corrected I expect the new growth will be normal. It might take a couple nodes of growth before the change shows.

There is an outside chance it's caused by a bacterium but I think that's unlikely because from the information you gave the seeds came from the same lots, were handled the same way as the normal ones, were potted in the same mix, etc. Still, if the plants don't grow out of it, I would say discard them instead of risking contaminating the garden soil.

If overwatering is causing the epinasty you will probably see normal or more-normal leaves developing by the 2nd new leaf. With a month before they're planted out, I suppose they'll be getting some outdoor exposure, which will help by drying the soil faster. Also as the plant grows it will remove moisture faster. Right now it's a baby possibly floating in a bathtub of wet potting mix.

Best wishes for their recovery.

Pat
https://www.gardenanswers.com/...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/....

GRIEVE, B. J. "Epinastic Response Induced in Plants by Bacterium Solanacearum E.F.S." Annals of Botany, vol. 3, no. 11, 1939, pp. 587–600. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42.... Accessed 26 Mar. 2024.

Thank you very much. I will leave the rest alone and see what happens. Could have been a watering issue. Maybe I gave them too much and didn't realize it. Never realized that could cause such a reaction! Fingers crossed they will grow out of it. Appreciate everyone's feedback here.

@nacarter1972
You're welcome! You'll usually find people here who are willing to help.

It has occurred to me that there's some possibility of root rot developing if the root systems are very small.

For now just let them dry out partway between waterings. The roots need air in the pores between "soil" particles.

If rot develops it's probably best to start over with fresh seeds and potting mix.

Pat

Hortaholic said:
Your tomato plant is exhibiting classic signs of "epinasty".

My NEW answer:
The unusual bending/twisting reaction (called 'epinasty') is caused by a mis-regulation of hormones inside the plant (such as ethylene) and may be due to a variety of external "disturbances in their growth"
See also;
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...

Learn something new everyday- Thxs for that diagnosis- Pat! @Hortaholic
Not even on my horizon... and I'm glad to now know it.

I agree with pat and suspect transplanting root damage or aftercare issues such as lack of oxygen at the rootzone, root damage, bactetia in new soil or excess water.

And I guess these contributing factors are probably unavoidable- BTW-
@nacarter1972 and may suggest some of your tomatoes are susceptible to something they didn't like.
While they probably would grow on fine- I also would not grow those plants out to avoid the risk of accidentally adding or strenghening those traits into the pool of the seeds you are saving. I often cull the 'least performing' seedlings (with a tear in my eye) if saving a strong and adaptable
seed-line is my goal-
-ken

EDIT: Cull may mean giving the plants away!

Yes, understood. Thank again!

Ken @kenisaac

Thanks for the acorn! Always happy when someone enjoys learning from one of my posts!

"Epinasty" is not a word in the usual gardening dictionaries, so not commonly known. I learned it in a plant physiology course.

This seems to be a common response by tomatoes to waterlogged roots. The grower apparently had several varieties which responded this way under the specific repotting conditions here. I think the sample size is too small to worry about carrying forward an undesirable trait unless the plants continue to develop epinasty when growing outdoors with better drainage.

But, everyone is free to do as they like in their own backyard!

Pat

Dave @Dave Thanks for the thumb and acorn!!

Feels great to receive validation from the top!

Pat

And, yet again I learn something new by reading random threads here. Thanks Pat.
And thanks @nacarter1972 for asking so we had this discussion.

UPDATE: The tomatoes seem to have gotten on the right track. New growth appears normal and I have clipped off the old curly stems. I've attached a new photo of the plant that I first posted. There is one thing that is odd, though. The stem is full of little nodules. Only the few plants that experienced the curls have these. Must be connected?