Tomato mosaic virus

What you see

A light-and-dark green mottle across the leaf, like a bad camouflage print. Leaves may be puckered, narrowed or fern-like. Fruit ripens unevenly with brown internal marbling. The plant does not die - it just quietly yields a third less.

Conditions

Spread mechanically, not by insects - on hands, tools, clothing, and on seed. Extraordinarily tough: it survives years in dried plant debris and in tobacco.

Treatment

There is no treatment. Pull and bin infected plants. Wash hands with soap and disinfect tools and stakes before touching healthy plants. Anyone who smokes should wash their hands before handling tomatoes.

Prevention

Grow resistant varieties (Tm marking on seed). Use clean seed. Disinfect stakes, ties and trays between seasons. Do not save seed from a mottled plant.

Months: May, June, July, August, September

Plants

Tomato, Sweet pepper, Chilli, Aubergine

Remedies

Not recorded — the field is blank rather than guessed.

The thing people get wrong

People spray fungicide at mosaic for weeks. Nothing will ever happen - it is a virus, and no garden product touches it. The honest response is to accept the reduced crop from that plant, keep your hands clean, and buy resistant seed next year. The one thing worth knowing: tobacco in cigarettes can carry live TMV, which is why the old glasshouse rule was no smoking among the tomatoes.