doovas84
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Location: coffs harbour, australia

Please help with deficiency/diseases

Hi, I hope someone can help. I've been growing veggies for about two years now and have had fairly good success until this year.
zucchini and squash plants grew but didn't produce as I think they had mosiac disease
Sweet corn grew really well but all cobs had zero taste!
bok choi seem to have some sort of disease or deficiency (pic 1) and ideas?
Tomatoes leaves always seem to turn yellow with brown spots on them (pic 2) any ideas?
Dwarf beans grow till a certain height then wilt and die, climbing beans grow well but suffer from some deficiency (pic 3)
CAPSICUMS/BELL PEPPERS, I can't grow to save my life. Plants tend to lose their leaves throughout the growing stages and Devol brown spots, fruit get about half grown and turn soggy and fall off! Thinking calcium deficiency for that.

I use my own compost in my beds and fertiliser with blood n bone, seaweeds emulsion, rock minerals and dolomite lime.
ph is around 6.8.
any help would be great. Thanks in advance.
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doovas84
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Location: coffs harbour, australia

Sorry
pic 1 are beans
pic 2 caps/peppers
pic 3 tomatoes
pic 4 bok choi

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applestar
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I think a major source of the problems is due to high humidity encouraging fungal diseases. Since your location is coastal, I would imagine you have humid weather. Try to grow varieties that are resistant -- they are available as hybrids as well as heirlooms.

Plant them with plenty of spacing between, prune or train on trellises and supports and/or mulch heavily to keep them up and away from the soil with good air circulation, and spray preventively with 1:8 diluted milk:water solution (and AACT - actively aerated compost tea) as soon as humid weather begins, before symptoms appear (from seedling stage if all the time).

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applestar
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BTW, to me this bell pepper plant looks like it's getting old -- was it new this growing season have you had it for a while? I like to overwinter pepper plants indoors and most hot peppers and pointy peppers do fine, but bell peppers don't always make it, although I have heard that they can grow for about 3 years with good production in Ecuador.

imafan26
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None of these plants do well in humid wet weather or with overhead irrigation.

I agree the beans,tomato and pepper all look like bacterial diseases or fungal. Anthrachnose, bacterial spot on the pepper. Beans could be bacterial or fusarium fungal disease

Zucchini and squash need pollination to make fruit. It may be inadequate pollination if they produced flowers. I switched to parthenocarpic zucchini recently to get better fruiting. Zucchini and squash are also very susceptible to fungal diseases like downy and powdery mildew

Since you have multiple fungal issues, you need to make sure sanitation is good. Pick up all the leaves and if plants are severely infected cull them or they will just become hosts to grow the problem.

Plant warm season vegetables when the weather is likely to be drier, and warmer. For me that is after the monsoon season.
If it is likely to rain and be very wet for days at a time. You will need to use a preventive fungicide every 3-5 days.

Make sure your plants are well spaced to allow for good air movement.

Choose varieties with resistance to disease. Most modern beans have been bred to be resistant to the common bean mosaic virus.

Beans = Provider, Jade,Nikel, Carson,Rocdor, or Espada.
https://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... Table.html

Corn Ilini Xtra Sweet, Murai, Silver Queen or Silver King, Ambrosia,Serendipity, Bodacious, Honey N' Pearl
Sometimes corn batches are not sweet, but the supersweets are usually good. If you get Golden Bantam, or regular corn they are more starchy and not as sweet.

Bell peppers in a hot humid environment does not last long. It is better to grow the Corno d'toro, Cubanelle, Banana, Shishito and other long sweet peppers instead. They are more productive and the plants are sturdier and more resistant to disease.
If you want to grow bell peppers the best will be California Wonder, Jupiter, Keystone, Yolo Wonder, Yellow Bell and if you order seed from Hawai, Kaala is a mini bell that was bred to be resistant and is the only bell that has lived more than a year for me. I don't like it because I don't like the small fruit.

The tomatoes are showing signs of Anthrachnose and angular leaf spot. Complete with the holes created when the necrotic areas drop out.

High humidity an alkaline soil that is probably fungal dominent. Sulfur the soil to bring the pH down to about pH 6.2 and make the soil less hospitable to them.
Watch your watering. I think you have a lot of compost in the soil so it is not drying very fast. You can have too much compost.
Mulch your plants to keep splashing to a minimum. Do not compost any diseased plants they need to go in the trash. Unless your compost is hot, it will not kill viruses or disease.
Since all of your plants are showing the same family of fungal diseases, there are a lot of spores in the air. In Summer, solarize the soil in the bed. In the meantime, plant the most disease resistant varieties you can find and use a fungicide like Serenade as a preventive. Corn can probably be planted spaced according to the label. You don't want to plant susceptible plants there to break the cycle. Grow tropical plants like yard long beans and NZ hot weather spinach. You need to select plant that have more resistance to disease and humid conditions. Remember there is often a tradeoff of some other trait for disease resistance.
https://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... leList.htm

doovas84
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Hi guys,
Thankyou for your detailed replies!
I do live on the coast and it can get quite humid, we had the hottest summer this year in a long time and now end of feb/all of march we have had a lot of rainfall. All the varieties I grow are recommended for my area and in previous years have done really well (except capsicum/bell peppers).
The capsicums in the pic are the "yellow banana" and "California" varieties and would be lucky to be three months old. I actually thought that caps liked the hot humid conditions but I'm only still new to this.
This is the first year my zucchinis have failed me, normally have way too many and I always try to hand pollinate. After trying to diagnose it my self it looks very similar to mosiac disease but could be wrong. Don't have any pics to show.
Corn, normally can't go wrong but this year I did. No taste at all. I grow sweet corn "honey sweet" and a balanese sweet corn.
Tomatoes still tend to produce but the leaves alway turn this way so I snip them off.
I must admit my "sanitary" practice isn't very good as I use the same Seca tears for everything and it all goes in the compost which then goes in the garden.
So by the looks I have a bit to work on and weather seems to be playing a big part. Not normally so hot and humid here and the rain hasn't stopped either.
I'll research the bacteria/fungal problems you have suggested and hopefully sort it out.
Thanks again to both of you for your replies, can be very frustrating not knowing but this is how we learn.
Thanks Matt.

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rainbowgardener
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"I must admit my "sanitary" practice isn't very good as I use the same Seca tears for everything and it all goes in the compost which then goes in the garden."

Unless you can guarantee that everything that goes into your compost pile, goes through a super hot composting process (the pile would need to be assembled all at once, and monitored to be sure it stays over 140 deg F for two solid weeks), never put diseased leaves into it. Put them in the trash. You are spreading diseases through your garden.

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applestar
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I carry a travel mist sprayer of rubbing alcohol (methylated spirits?) in my pocket and spray my pruning tools after cutting anything questionable and also before using on healthy plants just as a precaution. I also spray directly on hardened surface of plants like fruit tree branches and shrubs, pumpkin and melon vines and rinds, etc.

doovas84
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OK, I'm off to buy a new set of pruners and a spray bottle with metho in it. No more throwing everything into the compost, infected plants and leaves will go into the bin. I've been researching organic fungicide sprays and found this one :
1 drop of veg oil
1 drop of dish liquid
4 teaspoon of bi carb soda
2ltrs of water.
anyone ever used something like this?
It's says it's more of a preventative then a cure, so to get rid of most of the infected areas as possible then use.
Also another one using milk and water.
Another website suggested using the "Bordeaux mix" (copper & lime) wich I already have the ingredients for as I use this on my peach/nectarine trees.

Thanks again for the replies.

imafan26
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Sometimes you can get a bad batch of corn. I got some corn that wasn't sweet and it is a variety and a white corn that usually is sweet. I was told that the researcher who developed the corn likes to tweak and that batch might not have been as good as others.

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rainbowgardener
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Here's a thread we recently had about treating powdery mildew: https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/vi ... 11&t=71468

All the remedies mentioned are organic anti-fungals and apply the same to other fungal diseases.

As you noted, all of these (and any other anti-fungals including the bad chemical ones) work better preventatively or when you catch the disease very early. Since you have some well advanced disease, you will need to remove affected leaves and the figure on spraying every week or two or after it rains for the next couple months. With luck, you may have gotten ahead of it by then.



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