veggie plant leaves! Hello everyone, I am new to gardening and I have been actually doing really well with the garden up until now. I used organic manure and soil in my raised bed. Everything is level and my garden seems to drain quite well. I did have a little pest problem because I have lettuce and all the rain a few weeks back really made me worry but all that happened was a little white spidery looking growth under the plants in the soil appeared once the first hot day came -which I was told to throw the effected dirt away and pick the lowest leaves- and this has worked. I also sprayed some organic pesticide on my plants about 1.5 weeks ago and the small bite marks in my leaves seemed to have gone away. With this as background- Here is my issue: I live in MA and yesterday night (WEDS.) we had a huge storm. Earlier in the day around 2:30 when the sun isn't directly on my garden I sprayed the organic pesticide on my plants again because I noticed small bite marks returning to my plants and the pesticide container said I may need to do 2 or 3 applications over the next weeks for very persistent pests. About an hour later I watered my plants (this same organic pesticide never made my plants spot with the first application)...then 9:30 comes along and theres a tornado warning and the most intense downpour I have ever seen. Prior to this my plants looked amazing and my pepper plants were growing up so quickly with nice dark green leaves. I come outside on thursday afternoon after work to check on the garden and I find these white/translucent spots ALL OVER ALL of my hot peppers, sweet yellow pepper plants and some random spotting on my lettuce varieties. It almost looked like dirt specs from far away until I got close and realized they were spots. What could this be? I don't think its burning from the pesticide because I didn't do it in direct sunlight but I could be wrong. Also, from what I looked up- and I can't find much-I don't know if it could be a nitrogen deficiency from all the rain? The spotting isn't yellow and it doesn't look like typical leaf burn- but I might be wrong. I don't think we had hail that night and the spots aren't holes- but my coworker said it looks like just leaf damage...Do you think they will recover? Please help is this a pest of some sort? I just took care of my slugs problem with a cup of beer and now this! I'm so sad and scared for my plants! PLEASE HELP!!! It looks like the plants have white freckles all over but when you look close the spots are actually translucent and not fully penetrated bite marks- more like the pigment is just missing and the spots are surrounded by white borders. They literally occurred over night.
It looks like hail damage. Hail, even the pea-size or smaller, can damage leaves, and the damage looks like your translucent spots. In the past we have had two or three minutes of tiny hail, and the damage on cucumber, pepper, and eggplant leaves look like this. I see healthy, new green leaves toward the base of your plant. If the upper leaves are more heavily spotted than lower ones, bet on hail. Your plants will survive, put out new leaves, and the only damage is that perhaps they will set fruit a little later because the damaged leaves were of less help in making nutrients for the plant. For a beginner, you seem to be doing awfully well, and have obviously put a lot of thought and research into your garden.
Thank you so much! I was so scared that I might have some sort of virus but it seemed weird to me that it would take over all my plants So fast... I didn't think we had hail but we very well could have had small hail with the rain that night. I appreciate your response and thanks for the compliment...I've put alot of work into this garden so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get a little bit of edible fruit/veggies from all the plants I have. Good luck with your garden and thank you again!
Well, that solves a mystery in my yards too. I knew the plants that were smashed and broken were victims of the two bad hail storms we had this spring with quarter to golf ball size stones, but there were also incidents of pea size hail with a couple of other thunderstorms and I never even thought that those types of spots on leaves of my plants were hail damage. But they look exactly like yours and affected all the plants almost overnight. Ummm, wonder if I can file an insurance claim?
