browning leaves – The Pottymouth Gardener

The Potatoes are Dead. Long Live the Beans!

The potatoes are dead. I’ve not been able to find the reason. They started huge and beautiful and green and flowery. And then their leaves turned yellow and died. After much research and several attempts to fix them with nutrition – as there was no insect activity – I have come to believe it was fungal, viral, or bacterial in nature. See this earlier post for details: What’s STILL wrong with the potatoes?

Some time in the next few days I intend to empty the buckets and see if any of the plants were able to produce a few tubers. I found a few delicious potato treasures earlier in the summer when investigating causes for decline, and they were yummy. But beyond that, the season is obviously over for them, and there’s nothing left to do but try and learn more over the winter.

But….

….my beans are still kicking!! They have some issues as well (’cause what in my shitwagon garden doesn’t?), but I’m still getting some pretty good harvest, and I haven’t been able to identify what is causing their distress.

For pretty much every year I can think of that I’ve grown beans, this seems to happen by about late July or August:

The leaves start getting crispy and red looking. Then they start dying. This year I started paying much closer attention to them, as I now have a Japanese Beetle problem in my garden, and they LOVE LOVE LOVE the bean leaves. Last year was the first year I ever saw a Japanese Beetle, but now they seem to be permanent summer residents. Fucking douchekabobs. See my previous posts Fucking Japanese Beetles and Pesticles Part 1: Japanese Beetles, Flea Beetles, and Grasshoppers for more about those shit sneezes.

Since the invasion of the Fucking Japanese Beetles (FJBs), I have to keep real close tabs on the beans because the FJBs will skeletonize the plant in just a few days if left to their evil plans. The harsh pesticides that will keep them off for a few days does wash off with rain, and cannot be used at will – it has specifically prescribed maximum applications, and is, of course, poisonous to all kinds of things (including humans!) if used improperly.

Therefore, I have to use organic methods as well: I pluck or shake the assbaskets off of the leaves and into a soapy water solution, where they promptly drown.

Anyway, the FJBs have kept me sharp about the beans, and, along with my other nutritional failures around the garden, I’ve been focusing on why the leaves that haven’t been bothered by the FJBs are dying.

Unfortunately, I have no answers. Like the potatoes, the closest fit I can find in my research seems to be viral. When I try to find images of bean leaf issues, the closest match to how my leaves look is in articles about viruses or fungi, but my leaves don’t really fit the description or the look of the images of leaves that have those problems. And, if it’s a virus or something, why am I still getting such a delicious and harvest? Admittedly, it’s not as abundant as it seems like it should be, but many of the purple bean plants have died completely.

I have made it a point to fertilize using a general veggie fertilizer as well as a supplement or two that I’ve applied to everyone in the garden. A bit of magnesium and calcium as a preventative, since several other plants in the garden have needed those.

I noticed that the beans themselves started looking longer and more plump after starting a fertilizer routine, but there’s been no change to the part where leaves are crisping up and falling off.

So…feeling like I had to do something, I chose to get rid of all the shitty leaves, and reduce the amount of water they get from the drip irrigation, hoping that maybe they’re overwatered. The bean leaves are very good at providing their stems and soil with so much shade that the soil often stays pretty moist.

Unfortunately, the purple bean leaves seem to be hit the worst, and after removing the dead and dying leaves, there doesn’t seem to be much left of the purple crop. But the green ones are still growing well. They are still losing leaves, but seem to be looking healthier, and still producing abundantly!

I don’t have any real answers, and I continue to research, but I think the bulk of any new approach will have to happen next spring at planting. I think it’s time to ditch the giant felt grow bag that has been the home for these guys for a few seasons, with squash inhabiting the space before them. I think that in case it’s fungal or viral, I might have to dispose of the soil, or find a way to leave it fallow for a few seasons. Grrr.

What’s STILL wrong with the potatoes?

So my beautiful potatoes were growing so well! Beautiful flowers, strong green leaves, huge tall stalks. Until they weren’t. In my last post about the potatoes What’s wrong with my potatoes? I discussed the treatment I was attempting.

The leaves of my potatoes had started turning yellow with stupid purpley-brown spots. And the leaves went from spotted yellow to brown and fucking dead. My research told me that yellowing leaves, the oldest ones first, could be a nutrient uptake issue. And I hadn’t treated the soil with any fertilizer at all this season (I’m still learning about fertilizer).

So to try and fix the yellowing leaves, or at least stop the spread, I applied a standard Miracle-Gro garden fertilizer, and a magnesium (Mg) treatment. The Mg helps the plant to take in the proper nutrients from the soil. A deficiency of Mg means that even if the soil is rich and nutritious, the plant won’t be able to take in the treasure. It was a highly effective treatment for the Mg deficiency I experienced earlier in the season with my zucchini. See Something’s going on with the Zucchini.

More than two weeks later, there’s no discernable improvement, and in fact, the plants are very clearly dying.

When potatoes mature to the point of harvest, the stalks and leaves yellow and die back, so I’ve been trying to kid myself that it’s near harvest time. But NO. Die back should not be happening in July.

Shortly after the potato plant flowers, you’re supposed to be able to harvest some new potatoes from the potato sack. Because of this yellowing issue, I chose not to disturb the soil, and instead just checked for moisture problems. I was worried about overwatering because, to prep for an out of town trip, I had attached drip lines to water while we were gone. It’s handy to not have to hand water with the hose, so upon return, I left the drip lines in place.

All of my research is very clear about potatoes. Do not over or under water them. No shit.

It’s super fucking dry in Colorado, and the stupid-ass wildfires and global warming are not helping. To keep any plants alive in my garden, they must be watered AT MINIMUM once a day; to thrive, they need more than that. After seven years of messing with drip schedules, we’ve settled on a schedule that uses the least amount of water (we’re in perpetual draught here in the Front Range), and gives the most benefit. We water twice: three minutes at 6 AM, and another three minutes at 2 PM.

Point is, the potatoes are not UNDER watered.

So I had to check for overwatering. But how to know? I opened all of the sacks and found rich moist soil, but there was some white powdery stuff on th outside of the felt sacks (could be minerals from the water or could be a mold/mildew), and one of the sacks did seem too moist. But I don’t know for sure.

Needing to start somewhere, I chose a working hypothesis that the drip lines allowed me to overwater. But how? These plants are huge, they should be sucking up every last drop. But they don’t. Because they’re fucking dying.

Now that I have a hypothesis to test, I needed to do some testing. First, I looked inside the bags to observe the soil moisture and root systems. Here’s what I found when I dug around:

Surprise! These dead-ass looking plants made a potato or two!

To my shock, I found several lovely firm beautiful potatoes! They’re drying on my counter, and I haven’t eaten or cut into them yet, so I don’t know what they look like inside.

I felt around for more and smaller tubers in the bags, and didn’t feel much of anything except roots. I went ahead and pulled the potatoes I did find, because I am not optimistic that there’s more coming, and I don’t want the ones I have to rot in the bag.

But back to what’s wrong with the little fuckers.

Having investigated the soil in all the bags, I replaced everything back to their positions minus my little treasures, and waited 24 hours to dry out the soil. The bags dried out quickly, and I’m back to hand watering – just a little bit, so I can make sure not to make them too moist.

But folks, that’s not the problem. I still have one nice green potato plant, it’s the purple variety of seed potatoes that I picked up on a whim from Lowe’s in the spring. The other four bags are the Yukon seed potatoes I ordered from Gurney’s back in February.

Here’s the thing. It’s best to use seed potatoes because the seed companies make sure the seed potatoes are blight and fungus free. Well, they try to. And because all of my seed potatoes are from reputable seed places, I haven’t considered blight or fungus as a real threat. But after my initial investigation, and with further research, I sadly have come to believe that the Yukons (four of my five potato bags) are plagued with Shit Spot. Oh, I mean Brown Leaf Spot.

I did a whole bunch of research, and this article has me close to convinced, because of the picture of the leaves. These leaves look just like mine (the brown spots were all purpley just a week or so ago):

A potato leaf from my garden on the left, and an image of Brown Leaf Spot from MSU Extension on the right. The spots looked all purpley like the MSU pic before my plants died off even further.

To be honest, I don’t actually know what’s wrong with these potatoes, I’m just using the science techniques of literature review, testing hypotheses, and data collection. There’s a real possibility that the problem could be Verticillium Wilt or Fusarium Wilt, both of which are common fungal issues, and of which, my potatoes have several of the same symptoms.

I’m not a botanist or master gardener, so I’m having a hell of a time diagnosing the problem with any certainty. One of the reasons I can doubt the Brown Leaf Spot diagnosis is because my research says that it will cause reduced crop, like around 10%. But what I’m seeing from my actual plants is something far more devastating, which leans me towards the fungi or a bacterial wilt. For a few minutes, I was actually sure it was bacterial wilt.

Well, sonofabitch. If the problem is Brown Leaf Spot, then my research says it can be managed with a couple fungicides for the rest of the season, but my research results have yielded information primarily for farmers, not for the home garden, and not for potatoes in containers. And, at this stage of progression, even if I can keep the plants alive, there’s not enough time in the season for growth of a real crop of potatoes.

The other possibilities of wilts and bacteria will simply be the end, and will require me to destroy the plants and fallow the soil for years. Fuck a duck.

So, what am I left with? A handful of yummy new potatoes, and 4 containers full of tainted-ass potato plants, and no real solutions.

My plan: The one remaining healthy-looking bag will remain, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed for some yummy purple tubers in the fall. For the other four bags, I’m going to keep hand watering as necessary, until they finish dying. Just in case there’s another edible potato or two to come. At the end of the season I’m going to dump the bags and the soil entirely, maybe even burn them all (burning everything is one of the requirements for farmers who have blight), and start all over again next year with new bags, new soil, and new seed potatoes. Grrr, fucking pesticles!!! I’m really bummed out about this. Potatoes have been so easy to grow in the past, and so very very yummy!

What’s wrong with the potatoes?

Grrrr. The bane of my gardening existence. Fucking pesticles. Which kind this time?

Last year, the Apocalypse made seed potatoes impossible for me to get ahold of, so I tried to grow from grocery potatoes. I’ve read that grocery potatoes have treatments to prevent the growth of root nodes, or eyes, so it’s hard to get them to grow in the garden. Plus, I read that you can risk blights and things that way. But it was the Apocalypse, so fuck it, I’m gonna have to make do.

In the end, it was just really poor performance. Only a few of them sprouted, and of those, only a handful flowered, but the flowers kept disappearing. I can’t prove it, but I had very active grasshoppers in the garden last year, and I think they ate the flowers from my potatoes and cucumbers.

Whatever the cause, I got no potatoes in 2020. None. No soft buttery new potatoes, no big ole fall brown love nuggets, none. Boo. But every spring is a new spring so…

This year I replaced my potato sacks because the others had fallen apart after several winters outdoors. I ordered seed potatoes from a seed company, then got lucky and found a few more seed potatoes at Lowe’s. I put in new soil, and Voila! Potatoes a-growin’ like mad. Purple ones and yukon golds, if I remember correctly.

They’ve looked wonderful this year, their beautiful flowers are actually the photo on my home page.

Lovely green potato foliage and flowers.

Until now.

Now happening very quickly, is yellowing and speckling of the leaves, from the oldest leaves working up. And the lowest branches have yellowed and browned so much they’re falling off! Sonofabitch!!

First things, first. I got up close and personal, looking on top and under the leaves for little beasties. Bugs are the first pesticle I look for. In previous years, my potatoes have been pest-free except for hungry grasshoppers, so I wasn’t expecting insects and I didn’t find any.

Next I checked the moisture of the soil. I stuck my finger down into the dirt where the stalk meets the soil, and it’s appropriately moist just under the surface. I also checked moisture down lower, by lifting up the little root flap and touching the soil. It was mostly dry. For bagged potatoes, you don’t want the soil way down in the bag retaining much moisture because it can cause root rot and wreck your whole crop. Here in Colorado, the air is so dry, and we get so little rain, that everything dries out pretty well. Having the taters on a drip line helps find the right balance. So watering looks okay.

Bugs and moisture are the easy checks, from here it gets harder to diagnose. Is the problem viral, fungal, bacterial, or nutritional? The first three can be very hard to diagnose because so many of those issues look so similar, and require a lot of research and specialized knowledge. Also, because my garden is small and I grew from official seed potatoes from a reputable seed company (either Burpee, Territorial, or Gurney, I can’t remember), I’m not too worried about blight. So I’m looking at nutritional first.

Earlier this season, after doing the same tests on my zucchini plants – see Something’s Going on with the Zucchini – I discovered that a Magnesium (Mg) deficiency was the problem. Because the potatoes are presenting similarly, I’m going to try Epsom salt. I’ve learned a lot about Mg, specifically that it is a “mobile” nutrient, which means that it moves around within the plants’ vascular system as needed. This presents as the older leaves having a deficiency as the newer leaves use what’s available. New leaves are greener, older leaves yellow and die. That’s what I’ve got, so I went ahead and treated the potatoes with a 3 TBSP per 2 gallons of water mixture, applied to soil at the base of the plant. I went ahead and a hit all the tomatoes, too.

I’m also going to treat the taters with a general veggie fertilizer (yes, you can do both together) because it has occurred to me that I haven’t fertilized the potatoes at all yet this season. I’ll update with results!

Potatoes in grow sacks during greener days (2 weeks ago).

Something’s Going on with the Zucchini

The leaves on two of my three zucchini plants are doing this! It happened very rapidly, and doesn’t appear to be affecting the plants next to it. This picture was taken AFTER I removed several of the leaves that had turned crumbly brown and dead.

Both of the affected plants are producing fruit, but the fruit is growing much more slowly than in previous years.

Some Googling offered very few answers, as I found only two similar-looking leaves offered in photos on discussion boards asking the same question I am: What’s wrong with it? And neither of the boards had an actual diagnosis. I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.

First, I have to rule out some things. The most obvious: FUCKING INSECTS. I’ll get another post going soon that includes my garden-acquired amateur entomology knowledge, but for now it’s enough to say that I did not find any usual culprits like squash bugs or aphids. No real insect activity that I can see. The only insects I could find on them are these fun little fuckers:

And when I say fun LITTLE fuckers, I’m not kidding. These little dudes are tiny! Miniscule! Those are the veins of the leaf next to it. I couldn’t get a clear shot with my fancy-cam because it’s so small. AND, there’s only a couple on any one plant. I also checked the underside of the leaves, and thought I could make out a tiny little light brown grub, but there were only a couple, and so small I couldn’t make out any details to search on. My best guess is that the little brown grubs might be the babies of the black and white guy from the front, but I can’t be sure.

I did a pretty heavy Google search, including an image search, and I could not find any articles or images that identify this guy. It did not come up on any searches for “teeny little garden fuckers that are ruining my zukes”, although I admit, that search term may be a little too specific.

I find it difficult to believe that these little dudes, even if they’re sucking sap, are causing this level of damage. Additionally, I am staying regular with my organic pest killer, and have no infestations anywhere in the garden at the moment. So I’m ruling this guy out as the cause.

The other possibility is scald from pesticide or herbicide, or maybe a magnesium deficiency. But I couldn’t find anything definitive. I had used an organic pesticide a few days before, but was careful to do it according to the instructions, and on a cloudy evening as the sun was going down- the scald idea just didn’t make sense to me.

So my first experiment was to fertilize.

Zucchini leaves, yellowing from the outside edge in. Turning brown and dead.

I chose a basic fertilizer that should be good for everybody in the garden. I’m new to fertilizer, so am starting at the beginning, since I don’t actually know what’s wrong with these zucchini.

I am a full week out that fertilizer application and have seen no discernable difference or improvement. Actually, the first of the plants to show symptoms, has it spreading to the newer leaves, too.

While I still haven’t found any real insect activity on these zucchini plants, I have noticed that my yellow squash and cucumber leaves are also yellowing around the edges. Many websites and extension programs mention that this could be a nutrient uptake issue, and might be helped with a treatment of magnesium: Epsom salt. So today, I’ve applied a solution of 3 Tbsp Epsom salt in 2 gallons of water to all of the curcurbits in the garden.

I’m hoping that this will make an appreciable difference, because I’m running out of options, and with three zuke plants, I should be looking forward to fuck-tonne of squash. I have visions of piles of sweet green zukes for zoodles, roasted veggies, veggie kabobs, and so much more! We’re also heading to the hills for a camping trip, and the garden will be on autopilot for several days. Here’s hoping that when we return, I’ll come home to beautiful GREEN and healthy-looking zucchini.

I’ll update when we return!