Yellow Leaf Curl Virus

Yellow Leaf Curl is a virus that attacks tomato and pepper plants.

This virus causes a yellowing of the leaves and causes the leaves to curl upward. This looks similar to when a plant is dying from dehydration. One big difference is that you will often have a bad plant right next to a good plant. The simplest way to test your plant is to water it. Sounds silly, I know, but if it is simply a watering issue, you will see your plant start to perk back up. If it doesn't, more than likely it is yellow leaf curl.

Sadly, once your plant gets leaf curl it is recommended to pull that plant to prevent it from spreading. The infected plant will produce little to no fruits and often will die.

The virus is spread by pests hopping from the infected plant to a good plant. Pesticides will help control it, but removal is best. This is what happened to our first round of tomato plants this year and spread from one to the other until they were all infected.