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Hi, I'm Amanda Taylor, cooperative extension agent in Caldwell County, specializing in
fruits and vegetables. We're here today at the Unity Community Garden in Lenore ... in
downtown Lenore ... looking at some vegetable gardens that we have here on site. It's been
a very, very wet year so far, and we've seen a lot of problems come up in the garden that
are related to that wet weather we've been having.
The state Department of Climate has actually reported that June was the wettest June that
we've had since 1895. We continue to have rain here in July and we're seeing a lot of
issues in the garden, especially diseases that are popping up because of all the wetness
and all the dampness and the rain that's sitting on the leaves. I thought we'd come out to
the garden today and look at some of those issues that you may be having in your garden
as well. I'm standing next to a raised bed that has
some tomatoes and peppers and basil in it. The peppers here ... you can see some browning
on the edges of the leaf and some spots on the leaves. This is actually a bacterial disease,
and bacteria really likes wet conditions. When it's hot and it's wet ... those are perfect
conditions for bacteria to multiply and start affecting a plant and affecting leaves.
What you see here on these plants is you see the lower leaves affected the most, and they
start spotting first and maybe have some brown around the edges. And then eventually those
leaves will drop and fall off. I've pulled off a leaf here, and you can see the brown
spots that we have. And they're not really round. They're actually ... kind of stop at
a vein. That is characteristic of bacterial diseases. They're spots that are brown, but
they're not really round, and they stop at a vein.
So that's how we know it's bacterial. We don't really have a lot of pesticides or products
to treat bacterial diseases. The main thing here that you could use on plants that have
bacterial problems would be copper ... a copper product. But mainly this is a product of the
weather. If is does dry out a little bit, you'll start to see this problem kind of stop
spreading, and it won't be so much of an issue. We're standing in front of a bed of cucumbers
right now. I've pulled off a couple leaves because I wanted to show some things ... some
issues that we're having here with the squash. We have some disease issues going on, but
we also have some insect problems. If you've ever grown any type of squash in your garden,
you probably are familiar with squash bugs. They're one of the most common problems that
we have with squash around here. They look kind of like stink bugs. They have a back
that's shaped like a shield, and they're usually a dull gray or brown color. They do feed on
the leaves and they'll cause the edges of the leaves to turn brown. Those are squash
bugs. While I couldn't find an adult this morning,
I was able to find some eggs. They're usually laid in clusters ... sometimes on the upper
side of a leaf, but more often on the lower side of a leaf. They're usually this metallic,
kind of coppery colored little tiny eggs. To me they look like the little seeds from
strawberries. But these are pretty easy to find if you just go out and look in your garden.
If you're having a problem with squash bugs, or you've had problems in the past, it's a
good idea to go out and look for these eggs. Because if you can find the eggs, and get
those out of the garden, you're going to prevent those eggs from hatching and having a problem
with those adult squash bugs that are going to feed on your leaves.
This is what you need to be looking for ... are these metallic-colored clusters of eggs. You
can simply pull off a whole leaf, or you can pull off a part of the leaf. You can squash
these eggs; you can put them in the garbage. But the most important thing is to just get
them out of the garden. So those are squash bug eggs.
And then this little guy here ... this little yellow, fuzzy, oval-shaped insect ... it's
actually an insect, even though it doesn't quite look like it at this point, this is
the larva of a Mexican bean beetle. Usually they feed a lot on bean plants. This happens
to be on a squash leaf ... but this very distinct, fuzzy, yellow insect with some black kind
of hairs coming off of it ... Eventually this will turn into an adult bean beetle, which
will also feed on the leaves. But the larva tend to do the most damage by feeding on the
leaves. We have one here. Like I said, this is the
immature stage, so if you see these, you can go ahead and kill them. Once you have a problem
that becomes ... If your plants are really infested and you have a huge problem with
them, they're a lot harder to control than if you caught the problem early and could
get out and spray something or use something on your plants. So that's something to look
for, especially on your bean plants. This is the Mexican bean beetle.
There are some different pesticides you can use for them. There are some natural products,
and there's also some synthetic products that are available to treat these Mexican bean
beetles. When we talk about using a treatment on your plant, something that you're going
to spray ... It's been very difficult this spring and summer with all this wet weather
because it tends to wash off those products that you apply. If you can use a systemic
product ... a systemic one is one that will get into the plant and move throughout the
leaves ... that's going to give you some better control than ones that just sit on top of
the leaf and then will get washed off in the rain.
Here we have a bean plant that has been affected by the Mexican bean beetle. Here you can see
the type of damage that they do. It almost makes the leaves look lacy, because it eats
out a lot of holes, and eventually you'll see the whole plant just have really lace
leaves and almost no green left on the leaves. And they'll be brown. If we're to look on
the back side of this leaf, here we have an adult Mexican bean beetle. You saw the larva
before, which was that fuzzy, yellow. Here's what it looks like as an adult. If
you have bean plants, you may be seeing both the larva and the adult, which we have here.
This is the type of damage that they cause. When you see this, you should be able to find
those insects and know what type of problem that you have.
Next to me is a vegetable bed that has some okra, some peppers, and tomatoes growing in
it. The tomatoes here ... if you can see this ... on the lower leaves are dying off, and
we have a lot of yellowing and spotting on the leaves. This, what we have here, is a
bacterial problem. But early blight is a fungus that we see a lot of. It's probably one of
the most common disease that we have here on tomatoes. It does the same type of thing,
where it starts at the bottom, kills the leaves off, and eventually can kill the whole plant.
Looking at this plant, you can see just the top few leaflets are still green. The rest
is really yellow, and even some completely dead stems here. If you have this in your
garden, go ahead and go through and remove all these dead leaves. Basically they're not
providing any more energy to your plant. They're not longer green. They're really just being
sort of another source of inoculum ... a source of the problem. If you want to start to control
this problem, you need to get that dead and diseased leaves off of the plant, out of the
garden, away from the garden, and then begin treating your problem.
These tomatoes ... we have tomato cages on these. Tomato cages are one way of trellising
your tomatoes. Your tomatoes should be trellised just because you'll have less disease problems
with those. It's easier to harvest them as well. There are several different ways to
trellis tomatoes. We have several different ways that are shown here in the garden in
these different beds. You can use stakes and string. You can also use these tomato cages,
which are readily available at most garden centers. You can also make these at home,
but your tomato cages ... you'll get fewer tomatoes but you'll have bigger tomatoes,
compared to staking. So this is one way of trellising your tomatoes and getting them
up off the ground. With all these problems that we've mentioned
today, there's also many more that are out there. Squash vine borer is one that we see.
That's an insect that actually bores into the stem of the plant as a worm, and basically
causes the whole plant to just wilt down, sometimes overnight. If you dig into that
stem, you can find a worm and you'll usually see some gummy, yellow material there on the
stem near the base of the ground. So that's one thing. If you're having trouble with your
squash, that's usually one of the main problems that we have is that squash vine borer.
Those are the main issues that we're seeing ...the bacterial problems, some of the fungal
problems, and then some of our insects that are starting to take a hold on vegetable gardens.
If you have any questions about vegetable gardening, you can always call the Caldwell
County Extension Office at 828-757-1290 and we can help you with those problems. Also
if you're ... don't know what to use or how to treat a certain pest problem that you have
in your landscape, we can also help you with that.
We're hoping that this season will dry out a little bit, and we can start getting some
good yields on our crops. Right now we're also seeing tomatoes that aren't really ripening
yet, fruit that's not ripening yet ... everything is a little bit slower because of the cloudy
days and the wet weather. If you have any questions, feel free to call the Caldwell
County Extension Office.