Leaf spots
I get these leaf spots, or actually lines, on my plants leaves sometimes and I don't know what they are. It looks like someone is taking a white marker (the lines aren't that extremely white) and drawing squiggly lines over the leaves of my pepper, tomato, and some of my greens leaves. Any idea what it could be?
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Applestar is right, some kind of leaf miner. The fly lays eggs inside the leaf, between the layers of tissue. The larvae hatch out and chew their way around the leaf interior, leaving the squiggle trails. Eventually they come out, drop down to the ground, pupate in the soil and then become adults and start the whole thing over.
They are usually not very serious, the plant can lose pretty much leaf tissue that way without being slowed down. But some people, especially in warm climates where winter doesn't slow them down, have reported serious infestations of them. Since you are writing about tomatoes now, I take it you are one of those warm climate people?
Because the larva is inside the leaf, it is impervious to anything you spray on the outside of the leaf, whether organic or poison. So the main thing you can do is keep removing all the squiggled leaves. If you have a lot and don't want to defoliate your plant, you can look for where the creature actually is. Usually you can see a round bump at the end of the trail. Then just cut off and destroy the part of the leaf with the bump.
It helps to mulch well around your plants. That makes it harder for the larvae to get to the soil to pupate and make the next generation.
I have found trap crops work really well for them. Velvetleaf is a yellow flowering wildflower, which is named for its very soft leaves. The leafminers love them and ignore everything else just to eat velvetleaf. Then I just keep pulling the squiggled leaves off of that. Columbine and lambsquarters are also reputed to work as trap crops for it.
Hopefully that's not too much more than you wanted to know about leaf miners. !
Welcome to the Forum!!
They are usually not very serious, the plant can lose pretty much leaf tissue that way without being slowed down. But some people, especially in warm climates where winter doesn't slow them down, have reported serious infestations of them. Since you are writing about tomatoes now, I take it you are one of those warm climate people?
Because the larva is inside the leaf, it is impervious to anything you spray on the outside of the leaf, whether organic or poison. So the main thing you can do is keep removing all the squiggled leaves. If you have a lot and don't want to defoliate your plant, you can look for where the creature actually is. Usually you can see a round bump at the end of the trail. Then just cut off and destroy the part of the leaf with the bump.
It helps to mulch well around your plants. That makes it harder for the larvae to get to the soil to pupate and make the next generation.
I have found trap crops work really well for them. Velvetleaf is a yellow flowering wildflower, which is named for its very soft leaves. The leafminers love them and ignore everything else just to eat velvetleaf. Then I just keep pulling the squiggled leaves off of that. Columbine and lambsquarters are also reputed to work as trap crops for it.
Hopefully that's not too much more than you wanted to know about leaf miners. !
Welcome to the Forum!!