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Sadly, though my tomato plants got really big and seemed to be developing well (flowers then fruits) it turned out that they had some sort of fungal wilt and I've now had to discard the plants and the soil. First the leaves started to go yellow, but I thought this was just the heat or lack of water. But it got worse, and leaves dried up completely, and the green tomatoes started to turn brown and blotchy. I believe it was fusarium wilt after googling the symptoms.
I haven't taken any pictures (sorry) but it isn't very nice to see except if you wanted to identify your own wilt. All I know is that I had to throw out all the soil and disinfect tools and gloves I know I'd used with them, in case I spread it to other plants. The courgette right beside the tomatoes is fine -- maybe courgettes can't get this variety of wilt. A potted physalis is showing signs of it unfortunately, in fact I think this plant might have been the first to get it. I'm not sure what caused it, though I hear poor drainage can make wilts more likely -- this year my plants were in a tall PVC type growbag (see photo in my previous blog entry) and had water retaining crystals in the compost, maybe the drainage wasn't as good as last year when I had pots on top of a regular flat plastic growbag.
I had one "spare" tomato plant at the bottom of the garden that is starting to fruit, so perhaps I will still get a few tomatoes, though this has been a disappointing year for them in my garden.
