Can someone please tell me what is eating my cucumber leaves... it is as though whatever it is is inside the leaves, and it has just about ruined my cucumber patch...
How can I get rid of whatever this is?
This message was edited Jul 23, 2011 12:48 PM
Leaf Minor infestation.
Thats gonna be hard to get rid of. First of all = all the leaves have to be removed and bagged for the trash man or burned.
I hate giving advice on what to use to prevent or stop insects because most folks prefer
organic insect control but with an infestation like that, you gotta call in the big guns.
I think liquid seven dust will help prevent the little moths from laying their eggs on the leaves.
Malathion might help too.
So I need to get all of the infested leaves off the plants? .... OH MY ... What do you think this is?
There are both organic and conventional treatments for Leaf Miners. Ask in the garden dept. of a big box store...
lol=laughing at myself for spelling miner wrong.....just one of those moments.
I always get Leaf Miners in the Summer and Fall and as soon as they start showing up- I remove the infected leaves
and trash them asap then I treat the plants to prevent more miners.
Well i have taken all of the infested leaves off the plants and now there are basically leafless vines where my cukes are .... i wonder if my cucumuber season is over ??
Hi neighbor, the only thing I know for sure is there are no Big Box stores in Briggs. Maybe that little store/gas station on 183.
Back to cucumbers, I don't remove the leaves when it is this hot the leaves are there to help protect the cukes from the sun. I just spray regularly to kill the adults. I figure the leaves are already damaged but Ive never had that bad of an infestation. Hopefully your plants will put on new leaves please keep us posted. Or I could walk outside and you could yell. Lol
Hey Cricket... we ALL do that, once in a while. Sounds the same, so our brain goes there. ^_^
What's worse I didn't even notice the typo. Poor James probable wonders why the leafs are minors? No wonder he asked "what do you think this is? " again. OK, Leaf Miners it is. The heat is definatly getting to me. It's 96 at 9 pm.
Well howdy neighbor ..... yep definately no big stores here in Briggs !!!! Well the leaves were going to be gone in a week at the rate they were being eaten anyways ... will be interesting to see what happens ... been a hard year for gardens here in Texas this year.
Don't know how many neighbors you have===but you could always throw a white sheet over the plants so you don't loose what cukes are there....... I normally use shade cloth material. Walmart has shade cloth sometimes.
I bet the leaves would have been gone. I've never had an infestation that severe Crickets definatly made the right call, and more leaves may come on, it will be interesting to see.
What's your nearest Walmart 30+ minutes away? Maybe just a regular white sheet will work.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I think someone told me to just tear out the piece of the leaf where the leaf miner is and then you can leave the rest. And that's what I did this season. James_T, the leaf in the pic had so many little tunnels in it that that piece of advice wouldn't have helped you at all anyway, but next time, if you can catch it early, you can try it maybe and see if that works for you.
You can actually see the leaf miner? I didn't know that I guess I never looked.
No, I've never seen the leaf miner, I just tear out the channel it makes, knowing that it's in the channel somewhere, chomping along.
Here's a page about leaf miners: http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/leafminer-control.html
And this video from Jon Kohler (about a different kind of leaf miner on a chard or beet plant, actually), is where I got the tip to just remove the infected part and leave the rest of the leaf to continue growing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrpZM-OANQA&feature=channel_video_title . It's not identical to the leaf miners in James_t's pic, but I think the principle would be the same.
But whether you leave part of the leaf or remove the whole leaf, it's better to not leave the infected part hanging around, because the leaf miner, when it matures, drops to the ground and starts a new crop of leaf miners, from what I understand. I guess Neem oil or other insecticide can accomplish the same thing, but you wouldn't want to just give up on the plant and leave it hanging around, or you're setting yourself up for more problems next season, I would think.
but james leaves were completely covered with tunnels. Completely
Yeah, I agree. My previous post said it was advice for next year, lol!
I grow parthenocarpic cucumbers under row covers. I don't have leaf miners on those.
For the babylon and marketmore cukes which aren't parthenocarpic, I use spinosad. It works well to control leaf miners, especially if sprayed at first sign of infestation. Don't spray when bees are active as the wet spray is highly toxic to bees.
If you aren't concerned about pesticides or being organic, use imidicloprid when the plants are very young since you have to wait 21 days to harvest(I do not use this, but have a commercial grower friend who does).
