Garden woes. I never did get time to go over and get some of Laurie's
blueberries!
Most of my tomatoes have succombed to wilt. Many have the little
round holes that someone mentioned. They are all from caterpillars on
my plants, and you have to really look or you will miss some of them.
They are not the big green tomato guys, but little black ones with
lengthwise yellow stripes, that grow bigger into brown ones with the
yellow stripes.
I still have the on-going problem I've had for several years, and
still do not know what it is. Al Cooke once suggested spider mites,
but I do not see webs nor spiders. I just took a Pittsboro workshop
on plant diseases, but that really was no help, either.
I brought it home from Duke (Botany bldg) unknowingly, and put
infected citrus leaves into my compost bin 4 years ago. The next
summer, the disease hit plants around the compost bin, and it has
spread out more every year since. It effects different plants in
different ways, and is deadly.
It loves burgundy green beans. The leaves look "sunburned" and
eventually dry up and fall off. Some of the beans look "rusty". This
effect also occurs on mulberry trees, butterfly bushes, (liana beans
are more resistent), melons and squash, tomatoes, any veggie where one
wants to eat the actual leaves, like chard, etc.
Its effect is a yellowing and eventual death of all leaf parts except
the veins on blueberries, buckeye, roses.
On citrus, sunflowers, datura, avocado, one kind of ivy, red oxalis
and geraniums it has progressive patches where the life is just sucked
out of the leaves, so they become like parchment paper on the tips and
progress til the whole leaf is parchment. It has somewhat of a
detriment to lemon basil, rosemary, and impatience.

I found out one thing that may be bad (just from gasps I receive if I
mention it). If I hit the beans with Raid prior to the formation of
any flowers, the plant actually has a chance to get past a
death-dealing blow of disease. (I don't use any Raid once flowers or
fruits appear.) The citrus gets a new batch of great leaves (for a
while), the roses send out new healthy shoots (for a while). The
butterfly bushes and mulberry died, even with Raid.
Big question: by spraying Raid in my veggie garden am I introducing a
nerve agent into my own food chain?
The following plants are pretty immune to this thing:
peppers (some of which have other problems), pomagranate, another kind
of ivy, eggplants, fig, eleagnus, nimblewill, and bamboo grass.
Sorry this is so long. Just trying to present the full picture. This
is so frustrating and I just wish I could at least identify the darn
thing! Can anyone shed any light on this?
Kira