mildew and/or aphids

[tnkrer]

So yesterday morning I noticed a lot of off-white powdery stuff on tomato leaves, cucumber leaves and even mint and basil leaves. Its on both sides of the leaves, but more on the top than bottom. (That is all my garden at the moment). I wiped more than 80% of the white stuff using wet paper towels. It was easily wipeable. internet search suggests that its powdery mildew, but it looks different from the pictures that I have seen. Here is how it looks. (I initially thought that it was aphid eggs .. since I started spotting 1 or 2 aphids on the underside of the leaves as well.

What is it and how do I treat it? I have not sprayed the plant with anything so far. I have daconil.

On tomato:



Another tomato branch - (I cut it out since it was touching the ground anyway)



On cuke:



Thanks

[b54red]

That doesn't look like mildew to me. It looks more like some type of pollen that has fallen on them.

[tnkrer]

Originally Posted by b54red

That doesn't look like mildew to me. It looks more like some type of pollen that has fallen on them.

. That would be a relief. However, would pollen show up on the underside of leaves too? Its pasty and on lower levels of the plants. If it was pollen accumulating, would it show up more on higher levels of leaves?

[tnkrer]

Could it be something similar to honeydew from whiteflies? There are small black flies on the plants but no white flies that I could see

[dice]

While most of the "white stuff" in your photos looks too well-defined
for mildew, there are a couple of spots of what actually looks like
mildew, too. 2nd photo, bottom leaflet, about 3/4 of the way down: those
two white spots to the right of the center vein of the leaflet look like
powdery mildew to me. Also, powdery mildew will grow on the bottom
of the leaves. If you have a magnifying glass, you may be able to tell
whether it is powder mildew, downy mildew, or something else.

http://www.mastergardeners.org/publi...eryMildew.html

As for the aphids, liquid dish soap in solution will kill them by clogging
their breathing holes. Lady bugs will eat them, too.

This stuff has been recommended as fairly safe:
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/dish-detergent
Retailers of Seventh Generation products:
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/whe...tail-merchants

(I do not know what whitefly honeydew looks like, so I cannot comment
on that as a possility. I would have thought pollen was a good guess,
but I do not see why it would be on the bottoms of the leaves. Splash
up from leaves below during a hard rain? Maybe there is more than
one thing going on there.)

[dice]

P.S.: Starting on about page 4 of this thread
( http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...t=23241&page=4 ),
there is an in-depth discussion of powdery mildew treatments
("L.T." refers to a particular kind of powdery mildew).

[tnkrer]

Thanks Alias .. (or Dice, whichever you prefer)
That's a long thread with too much details for a newbie. I read it once, absorbed may be 10% of the information. I will read again (and again) and at some point, I will get a better understanding.

In the meantime, the leaves that I cleaned have stayed clean. I have removed lower level branches to improve air circulation. And keep looking at the plants to see if there is further deterioration. I don't see evidence of that yet. The cuke leaves though have gotten holes in them .. so something is wrong with the cukes

[tnkrer]

So adding some more pictures. My paranoia tells me that something is wrong with my early girl tomato. It was growing happily at the beginning and all the leaves looked perky (except when beat down by sun). Now they look droopy. Also the biggest cuke leaf (4th on the plant, its still a very young plant) is already yellowing .. may be I should start growing few more cuke seeds right now ..

They are in my album, not sure how to get those here yet

2013 garden

[dice]

I am not really familiar with mildew treatments on plants. I do not see
much of it, and when I have seen it, I just pulled the plant and tossed it.
(Some kind of flower in the yard, IIRC.)

Good luck with that.

[dice]

[tomato disease pictures]
These photos are sometimes helpful:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/v...roblem-solver/
(I thought their early blight pictures were good.)

http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...ys/TomKey.html

(Since there is so much to choose from, I tend to try to just keep
the plants outgrowing the problems and cut off funky-looking growth
and toss it in the garbage or yard waste recycling bin, hoping it is not
something systemic.)

[tnkrer]

Thanks for the links Dice .. I agree with you that it would be better for me to wait for the plant to outgrow the problem. However, I have such a small garden than any one plant dying has a huge impact . And as new parents worry about every small variation of their newborn's behavior, new gardeners worry about minor things on the plants


I did figure out how to put album pictures in the thread .. so here they are.

cucumber leaf dying ..



yellowed leaves



curled tomato leaves



new white stuff appeared on the early girl plant .. which seems to have slowed down

[dice]

So what kind of fertilizer were you using again?
(See the description of phorphorous deficiency on this page:
http://5e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289
)

The yellowed leaves with the green veins could be magnesium
deficiency (try a foliar feed with a teaspoon of epsom salts
dissolved in water and see if there is any change) or
potassium deficiency (or an excess of something blocking
the uptake of either of those).

[tnkrer]

I am using tomato tone fertilizer strip (per the instructions in earthtainer guide) and also supplementing with foliage pro (1 tsp in 2 gal) every 8-9 days. (So far applied only twice separated by 9 days. Next scheduled foliage pro will be coming mid next week)

Thanks for that link Dice. The yellowing is only on two bottom branches of two suckers. (Out of probably 25 branches) .. So that is less of a worry.
The necrosis on leaves is similar to that shown on the Mg deficiency picture.



However, I have two SWCs. One is an earthtainer and another is a large SWC. Both use same amount of fertilizer (per grow media volume), same grow media. The volume of wicking column is more in the large SWC. (so it may be running more wet). So I think that if earthtainer had Mg deficiency, my large SWC should also show it. But it does not.

Another difference between those two is, earthtainer has the gray plastic bag on the grow media, while large SWC does not have any plastic on it. Before the plant slowed down in growth, we did have 3-4 90+ temp days. So now I am inclined towards heat stress. I need to look into the earthtainer instructions on what to do during hotter days to avoid baking the grow media

[dice]

Some people paint their containers a light color, other people wrap
something around them (a plastic garbage bag, a bamboo curtain,
a piece of mylar, etc; something to keep direct sun off of the
containers. (I rarely see hot enough temperatures up here on
the Pacific Coast for that to be an issue.)

If pH is off considerably, that can affect nutrient uptake. Tomatoes
like about 6.5 best, and 6.2-7.2 pretty much works.
I use one of these, it reads consistently .1 low:
http://www.amazon.com/Luster-Leaf-18...446016-2955330
(Colorful explanation of why this matters:
http://www.selectedplants.com/OrthoPhosphate.htm
A lot more detail:
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~blpprt/acidity2_review.html
)

What nutrients in excess block which other nutrients:
http://www.totalgro.com/concepts.htm