Vegetable garden issues
Editor’s note: This article is from the archives of the MSU Crop Advisory Team Alerts. Check the label of any pesticide referenced to ensure your use is included.
August
is a great time of the year for those of us who grow vegetables in
backyard gardens. Our hard work during the spring and early summer is
paying off with fresh cucumbers, basil, parsley, summer squash and if
our nights ever warm up, tasty tomatoes. The following are some of the
pest and disease issues I am seeing in my garden, maybe this will help
identify similar problems in your garden.
Holely peppers. Photo credit: H. Russell, Diagnostic Services.
European corn borer injury to peppers
This ubiquitous caterpillar bores in the stems and fruit of many plants.
I get them in peppers and tomatoes as well as my sweet corn. Once you
see the damage, there is not much you can do about it. I tend not worry
about the minor damage this bug does; I just toss the fruit and move on.
A line of small holes across sweet corn leaves shows
where a European corn borer was feeding in the whole
ear. Photo credit: H. Russell, Diagnostic Services.
Squash leaf disease. Photo credit: H. Russell, Diagnostic
Services.
Powdery mildew and squash and cucumbers
White blotchy patches on yellowing leaves are the signs of powdery
mildew. I battle this problem every year and have lost most of these
battles. Powdery mildew can result in total decline of the affected
plants. Religious pruning and fungicide sprays have kept this disease at
bay this year.
Bad looking basil. Photo credit: H. Russell, Diagnostic Services.
Basil roots rhizoctonia. Photo credit: J. Byrne, Diagnostic
Services.
Rhizoctonia root rot in basil
I found one sorry looking basil plant (see arrow in photo) among a row
of healthy, vigorously growing basil plants. I brought the whole plant
into the lab, and Jan and Jackie isolated rhizoctonia rot root.
Hopefully, this fungal pathogen won’t spread to the other basil plants.
The dark diseased looking root is a dead give away of root rot.
Sorry looking parsely. Photo credit: H. Russell, Diagnostic
Services.
Parsely crown borer.Photo credit: J. Byrne, Diagnostic
Services.
Parsley crown borer
I thought I had a root rot problem in my flat leaf parsley too, but when
I looked closer I saw that some bug had chewed out the center of the
crown. I didn’t find the bug, so I don’t know what did it. Remarkably,
the parsley recovered and began to produce new shoots. Too bad I dug it
up.
Japanese beetles
I see them all over the garden. They chew a little bit here and there, but mostly I just see them copulating.
