I have a cucumber plant that is new in a 5 gallon container, it was doing ok, but now it has holes in the older leaves and white lines all over. I don't see any visible bugs on the plant itself. (see photo).
Accross on the other side of the garden, I have a small basil plant, and it has been doing well but today I noticed two of the leaves have similar white lines on it and there are small tiny bugs on the soil, I din't see any on the plant itself.
This is all new to me , any help would be great.
You can check out a short video of the bugs here: https://youtu.be/Ltr5i31ZeJw
sorry it's not great, but I think you get the idea.
Bug or Disease taking over basil and Cucumber
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DoubleDogFarm
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rainbowgardener
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As Eric said, the white squiggles are made by the larvae of the leaf miner, tunneling around between the layers of the leaves. Apparently you waited a long time to do anything about it. If you stay attentive, then leaf miners are easy to control - as soon as you see the first sign of a squiggle, just pull the leaf off and trash it (not in the compost).
It also helps to keep your plants well mulched. The next phase of the life cycle, once the larva has fattened up on your plants leaves is that it exits the leaf, drops to the ground, pupates in the soil and emerges as an adult moth to lay eggs inside more leaves. If it can't get to the soil very well, that process is interrupted.
For future reference if you can find lambsquarters, columbine, or velvetleaf, they are good trap crops for the leaf miners. Lambsquarters is a common weed. Velvetleaf is a wildflower. Mine came from a packet of mixed wildflower seed. Columbine is a very pretty shade plant. I have velvetleaf that pops up around my property ever since I planted the wildflower seed (everything else died out). The leaf miners love the soft leaves of the velvet leaf and leave everything else alone. I just have to keep pulling the squiggled leaves off the velvetleaf.
It also helps to keep your plants well mulched. The next phase of the life cycle, once the larva has fattened up on your plants leaves is that it exits the leaf, drops to the ground, pupates in the soil and emerges as an adult moth to lay eggs inside more leaves. If it can't get to the soil very well, that process is interrupted.
For future reference if you can find lambsquarters, columbine, or velvetleaf, they are good trap crops for the leaf miners. Lambsquarters is a common weed. Velvetleaf is a wildflower. Mine came from a packet of mixed wildflower seed. Columbine is a very pretty shade plant. I have velvetleaf that pops up around my property ever since I planted the wildflower seed (everything else died out). The leaf miners love the soft leaves of the velvet leaf and leave everything else alone. I just have to keep pulling the squiggled leaves off the velvetleaf.
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What about this white bugs, they are all over by raised garden, even though the only thing in the garden at the moment is a small basil plant. They are very small 1/3 of a grain of rice... they move really fast.
Here is another video.
https://youtu.be/oUu0wApwKq4
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rainbowgardener
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The white bugs are mostly in the soil? Do they hop or fly? If they hop, I'm thinking springtails.
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... 39&t=53914
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... 39&t=53914