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Post by oldmobie on Jul 27, 2014 17:04:38 GMT -5
I'm losing a few of my (presumed) pepos. (And one watermelon.) They're wilted and wasting away. That picture is two days old. Now the affected plants are nearly dead. I saw similar damage IDed as probable disease spread by cucumber beetles on kazedwards' cantaloupe thread. I started looking for them, and sure enough, I saw one. Now I've sevin dusted all my cukes, zukes, squash, pumpkins, watermelons that either have plenty of fruit, or haven't bloomed yet. That leaves two cukes and two watermelons that I don't want to Sevin, because they need to be pollinated. They're in bloom, and have one ~1" cuke between them. What are my options to get rid of the beetles, but keep the pollinators? In the future I hope to breed in immunity to the disease(s), but I've only been saving seed one year, so I'd like to protect most everything and build diversity this season, selecting for immunity starting next season or the one after.
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Post by littleminnie on Jul 27, 2014 21:39:13 GMT -5
In 2012 I had a plague of non native spotted cucumber beetles here along with more than usual striped ones. I used a shop vac to kill them. Even if you will use pesticides they will kill the bees so no more fruit, but vacuuming works great. Despite all the beetles, I never got disease. There are other things that can cause disease and wilting.
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Post by kazedwards on Jul 28, 2014 0:44:47 GMT -5
Well I don't know if I'm going to do anything yet so I might be inadvertently selecting for resistance this season. The leaves on mine are turning up first then wilting on the bad plant. It started last week when they really needed water. They all looked half dead then I watered heavily and most snapped back. Now all the cantaloupe has upturned leaves and that one plant is doing really bad. The watermelon has upturned or cupped leaves as well but other wise growing normal. The cucumbers seem fine. I have noticed that the cantaloupe and watermelon have several small (1-2 inch) fruits that have rotted. I don't know if they weren't pollinated well or if it's something more. I have not yet had the obviously wonderful experience of dealing with plant diseases yet so this season is a leaning process for me. Let me know what is working for you. Also Holly said to use fish emulsion bc they don't like the smell.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 28, 2014 1:34:15 GMT -5
Well I don't know if I'm going to do anything yet so I might be inadvertently selecting for resistance this season. The leaves on mine are turning up first then wilting on the bad plant. It started last week when they really needed water. They all looked half dead then I watered heavily and most snapped back. Now all the cantaloupe has upturned leaves and that one plant is doing really bad. The watermelon has upturned or cupped leaves as well but other wise growing normal. The cucumbers seem fine. I have noticed that the cantaloupe and watermelon have several small (1-2 inch) fruits that have rotted. I don't know if they weren't pollinated well or if it's something more. I have not yet had the obviously wonderful experience of dealing with plant diseases yet so this season is a leaning process for me. Let me know what is working for you. Also Holly said to use fish emulsion bc they don't like the smell. I gave away my fish emulsion to a guy who was giving me "worm-tea" and wanted to fortify it a bit. I'll have to try to pick some up when funds are available.
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Post by kazedwards on Jul 28, 2014 1:53:06 GMT -5
Do you get it at a big box store or what?
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jul 28, 2014 10:32:50 GMT -5
You can get bacterial wilt from cucumber beetles as the vector, but only if you have cuke beetles carrying bacterial wilt. If you break the stem and the sap is stringy/mucus that indicates you're probably looking at bacterial wilt. I'd refrain from assuming its wilt without confirming. Especially if you aren't seeing a ton of damage from cucumber beetles.
A single plant dropping dead is often squash vine borer, that can be checked by autopsy of the dead plant as well. You aren't going to do anything to borers with Sevin. I imagine the neonicotinoid insecticides would be effective on vine borers, but a systemic pesticide like that will also be poisoning your pollinators.
Breeding for resistance is a long term project, and you cannot select for wilt or borer resistance if you are removing the selection pressure by killing the pest/disease vector. Personally I'd rather lose squash than breath in a cholinesterase inhibitor neurotoxin, but that's just me.
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Post by kazedwards on Jul 28, 2014 10:58:28 GMT -5
I not sure what it is. I will do the stem test. I am a little skeptical of it being from cucumber beetles because I have only seen a couple. Also it is only the one plant doing bad not including the upturned leaves-which might be normal for the variety. This might be naive as well but the cucumbers seem fine. Only a few dead leaves from the under part of the trellis. I'm going to water well today and see if that helps. A lot the cantaloupe problem might be because of that due really close planting(6-8 plants in 9sqft) so they are competing with each other. hopefully that will get them going again. at least upturned leaves ones.
P.S. I agree with oxbow about the insecticides.
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Post by kazedwards on Jul 28, 2014 12:33:50 GMT -5
What is it now?
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Post by kazedwards on Jul 28, 2014 13:07:26 GMT -5
You can get bacterial wilt from cucumber beetles as the vector, but only if you have cuke beetles carrying bacterial wilt. If you break the stem and the sap is stringy/mucus that indicates you're probably looking at bacterial wilt. I'd refrain from assuming its wilt without confirming. Especially if you aren't seeing a ton of damage from cucumber beetles. A single plant dropping dead is often squash vine borer, that can be checked by autopsy of the dead plant as well. You aren't going to do anything to borers with Sevin. I imagine the neonicotinoid insecticides would be effective on vine borers, but a systemic pesticide like that will also be poisoning your pollinators. Breeding for resistance is a long term project, and you cannot select for wilt or borer resistance if you are removing the selection pressure by killing the pest/disease vector. Personally I'd rather lose squash than breath in a cholinesterase inhibitor neurotoxin, but that's just me. What do you think oxbow, Bacterial Wilt? I don't know enough yet about plant anatomy to tell if this is normal.
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Post by flowerweaver on Jul 28, 2014 18:32:15 GMT -5
Was that side of the melon laying on the ground? It helps to lift them up on something so they don't get flat and rot which entices critters and insects to chew on them. We just use a bit of straw underneath ours here where it's arid but where there's ground moisture involved you can buy (or improvise) melon cradles made for the task. Check out Lee Valley Tools and search 'melon cradles'.
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Post by steev on Jul 28, 2014 18:54:57 GMT -5
"Melon cradles"? Weren't women burning those, in the 60's?
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jul 28, 2014 19:02:53 GMT -5
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Post by jondear on Jul 28, 2014 20:38:11 GMT -5
Good link oxbow....
Thankfully I have only seen 1 cuke beetle this year. 3 years ago they were awful but the last two they haven't been a problem at all.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 28, 2014 21:17:43 GMT -5
Do you get it at a big box store or what? The fish fertilizer? I bought it 5-10 years ago, but I'm pretty sure it was from Walmart.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 28, 2014 21:53:29 GMT -5
I don't think the sap shows wilt in my case. Hard to tell as there isn't much sap left. However, I looked again for vine borer. (I had already checked, but due to my inexperience, I missed it the first time.) My surgical technique could probably use a little work... I probably made a bigger mess than he did. I doubt that this vine will live, but I cut out smaller borers from two other vines that were less wilted. Hopefully they'll make it. I don't intend to save seed from this growout anyway, because the (probably) poisonous gourds can cross easily with the pumpkins. (Assuming the pumpkins are pepo. I'm gonna have to learn to tell.) But for future reference, I've only read of borer resistence in moschata. Is there resistence in the other species, so I can select for it? In particular, it looks like I'll be growing pepo and cucumbers, in addition to moschata.
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