By Rose1949
N.E.Lincolnshire,
United Kingdom 
I have a serious problem with my tomatoes in my greenhouse. I have been growing them for years and have never seen anything like this before. I have grown an Italian selection from Suttons seeds and grew some for two of my friends. Theirs are fine, but mine, especially the plum and salad variety are soft and taste absolutely vile. The skins are all crinkly too on the plum variety. The cherry ones are ripening well, but they too taste vile . I have English Sungold in the greenhouse and they are beautiful. I am at my wits end with them as it looks like I will have to dump the lot. I have enclosed photos of the tomatoes and how the leaves went, which I have now removed. I hope one of you knows as I have tried asking on the web site with no luck. Its a mystery.
3 Sep, 2012
Answers
I rally don't know but wonder about blight?
3 Sep, 2012
That yellow mosaicing on the leaves is typical of virus attack. Looks like you've been very unlucky and they've contracted a virus while growing. Nothing you can do about it, except dispose of the plants.
What are the leaves like on the vile tasting cherry tomato? Same problem?
3 Sep, 2012
Virus, and if it is affecting all of your tomatoes then you have a problem, sorry Rose. Dospose of all the plants and the compost to landfill - do not compost or try to re-use the compost in the pots. Wash your pots thoroughly and sterilise them with a houshold disinfectant. Empty the greenhouse and give it a good clean, then fumigate it. Hopefully this will clear things up for next years crop.
If some of the tomatoes are still OK then continue to use them but dispose of the plants at the end of the season.
3 Sep, 2012
Thanks all of you for your help. Bulbaholic, I grew the tomatoes in the ground, not in pots and the cherry toms. are in a raised bed of multicompost . The soil is a mix of well rotted manure and compost, which I have always done. I completely clear the old soil out each year and put fresh in. I also for the first time fumigated the greenhouse as I got a bad case of red spider mite last year. I have cucumbers on the other side of the greenhouse which are doing really well. I will be removing the bad ones and will leave the others for now. Thanks once again.
Bamboo, thankyou. The leaves were only like this on the plum tomatoes but are ok on the bad tasting cherries. I was so careful this year after the infestation last year and can't understand how they picked up the virus.
4 Sep, 2012
Well it just happens sometimes, but one thought - do you smoke, or does anyone else smoke, who may immediately after a ciggie then touched the tomato plants, the virused ones? Sometimes that can introduce a virus...
4 Sep, 2012
Noone smokes at all. Thanks for getting back to me. Its so frustrating when you do everything possible to have healthy plants and then something like this happens.
4 Sep, 2012
Well, seems like you didn't do anything to cause it, Rose - put it down to sod's law. Seems to me at least a third of life is down to that...;-)
5 Sep, 2012
Thanks once again.
6 Sep, 2012
Previous question
I believe the mottled leaves is a virus, but don't know more than that.
3 Sep, 2012