I got a real scare this morning when I was spraying with the bleach solution. Despite rain again the day before yesterday the continuous spraying has most of my disease issues under control for now. Of course it rained cats and dogs no more than two hours after I came inside to shower the DEET off.
What scared me is the top of one of my Indian Stripe PL plants which looked terrific just the day before yesterday prior to the rain. I was spraying slowly to avoid the drift caused by a slight breeze this morning and was taking the time to inspect every plant before spraying with the bleach solution and I saw this at the top of the plant. It was still very early in the morning so the light wasn't the best for a photo and it was 7 feet off the ground so I had some difficulty focusing good when I took the pictures but what I saw looked like the beginnings of Late Blight. I went back and rechecked every other plant in the garden and will do so again tomorrow to be sure it doesn't appear again. My hope is that this is some form of TSWV that I haven't seen before causing this but the similarity to Gray Mold in the way the leaves have just started to blacken and kinda melt makes me think Late Blight. I have seen it before but never on just one plant but then again I may have caught it really early. I am pretty sure it isn't Gray Mold or TSWV. I have never seen GM start in the very top of a plant nor have I ever seen it wilt the leaves this quickly. 24 hours before the plant looked perfect because I had just lowered it and clipped it so I really got a good look at it. There was also the beginnings of lesions in the stems which usually takes a lot of time with either GM or TSWV.
I immediately sprayed it down really well then cut off the top half of the plant. With the rain coming again soon after I went in I'm hoping against hope that it isn't LB coming in on these rains. I have seen it once before in mid summer and it destroyed my whole patch within two weeks. This had only affected the top third of the plant and it has only been there for a matter of hours so I'm not so sure the picture shows how bad this looked. Some of you who experience LB more frequently than I might have some insight.
Bill
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