Diseased courgette plants
 

Some disease is attacking my courgette plants. It doesn't appear to be
affecting production; at least, we still have more than we can eat. But
I'm a little worried about long-term effects: will this stuff kill the
plants before the frosts, and will it cause problems for young plants in
future years (three-bed rotation)? The younger leaves don't seem to be
affected. Is there anything I can do about it?

Photos are available at http://www.edessa.co.uk/garden/courgettes.html.
I'd appreciate any advice or information anyone has.

Rhiannon

Diseased courgette plants
 

Some disease is attacking my courgette plants.
Rhiannon

It may be some form of mosaic virus? Try Googling for a few pictures. I've
had courgette plants go like that in the past, however production came to a
stand-still. The plants still 'survived' but didn't produce any new
courgettes and the existing ones didn't get any bigger. I pulled mine up and
put them in the refuse - not onto the compost heap where the disease could
be passed on. Despite this the following years plants in a different
location had exactly the same problem whilst they were still young and also
had to be discarded before a single courgette had formed, so the disease
hung around somehow, somewhere.
--
David
.... Email address on website http://www.avisoft.co.uk
.... Blog at http://dlts-french-adventures.blogspot.com/

Diseased courgette plants
 

In message , "David (in
Normandy)" writes
Some disease is attacking my courgette plants.
Rhiannon

It may be some form of mosaic virus? Try Googling for a few pictures. I've
had courgette plants go like that in the past, however production came to a
stand-still. The plants still 'survived' but didn't produce any new

The young leaves seem to be healthy and not distorted, and the older
ones seem to have been eaten alive - my runner beans look like that.
Get a handlens or other powerful magnifier and look very carefully at
the backs of the leaves - are there any very tiny, almost transparent
things moving about? Any cast skins of sap-sucking pests still with
their stylets stuck into the leaf?

If so, keep an eye out for the same thing next year but you'll get
different pests if the weather's different. It's too late to bother
about them this year.

--
Sue ]:(:)

Diseased courgette plants
 

MadCow wrote:
Get a handlens or other powerful magnifier and look very carefully at
the backs of the leaves - are there any very tiny, almost transparent
things moving about?

I'll have a look later today. Thanks for the suggestion!

Rhiannon