Ideas?

[WilburMartin]

Here is a leaf I pruned today from a Pink Brandywine - disease? water problem? I did notice a streak of damage on neighboring plants - almost as if something dripped on them in a line and did some damage, but I have no clue what it may have been.

[Cole_Robbie]

The holes in the leaves are from some sort of bug, like horn worms or beetles.

[gorbelly]

Agree, looks like flea beetle damage + some kind of caterpillar or beetle.

That interveinal "ghosting" is something I've seen and it was a head-scratcher for me, but I eventually figured out that it's how drought stress sometimes first manifests on my plants. At first I thought it was something that only affected rugose-leafed plants, but then I realized that all my rugose plants are dwarfs in containers and subject to drying out if I'm not around to water when it's needed, whereas the plants in the ground with regular foliage don't get it at all, probably because the clay-loam soil around here holds moisture well. I usually don't worry about it when I see it because so far it's only happened on a few leaves here and there when I do see it and it doesn't seem to spread. Just my personal experience.

[b54red]

Looks like most of the damage is from flea beetles. I have found that a mild Permethrin, soapy water and food grade DE sprayed well on, especially the undersides of the leaves, will get rid of them at least for a while. A good heavy mulch will also help as will removing most of the lowest foliage.

Bill

[gorbelly]

I find that flea beetles are mostly an aesthetic problem in my garden and don't do enough damage to affect production. As a result, I just resign myself to them, because I prefer not to spray anything that could hurt beneficial predators unless the problem posed is more serious. Maybe they are more damaging elsewhere.

The only time they really threaten the health of plants in my garden is in small eggplant seedlings, which they can really overwhelm, but this can be avoided by waiting until the seedlings are larger and more robust before setting them out. I also experimented with using aluminum foil as mulch, which seemed to work really well when the eggplants were young, but eventually the eggplants outgrew the small square I used when they were first put out and shaded the foil, and the flea beetles stopped being deterred. However, by the time that happened the plants were very large and able to shrug off the flea beetle damage. I considered using actual reflective mulch, but I don't think it'll work any better than regular plastic mulch once the eggplants get large enough to shade it. I've heard plastic mulch helps simply because it's a barrier (the flea beetle larvae live in the soil) but I prefer not to use plastic mulch (personal preference related to generating more plastic trash and cost).

Next year, I'm going to try beneficial nematodes to see whether they help keep flea beetle populations down. I figure that, even if they don't help with flea beetles, they may work on things like cutworms, borer pupae, hornworm moth pupae, etc.