San Leandro(east Bay near the marina),CA Pest advice

Can anyone tell me what kind of plant pests(insect or disease) to watch out for in my area? I just started a Sq Ft Garden with snow peas, bush beans, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, swiss chard, beets, broccoli, cucumber, basil, zucchini, cucumber, bell peppers, and marigolds.

Hi Pat & Kathy! Welcome to the forum.

I am east of you in Danville. I can tell you what I have seen in my garden so far this spring. We have had snails, aphids, some kind of small worm (unknown), plant bugs (which I thought were not doing anything) and leaf miners. I now wonder if the immature plant bugs are actually the leaf miners that took over my Swiss chard.

Our area is hotter then San Leandro. I have also had some mildew due to the cooler spring.

I use organic insecticide soap, Neem (another organic bug killer), and come copper derived fungicide. I have only resorted to those when washing the bugs off didn't help.

I would be interested in how your chard grows. I have had some older chard bolt on me. I kept cutting it down but then it got infected with the leaf miners so I removed the infected leaves and ended up pulling the plants because there wasn't anything left.

Hope springs eternal though as I continue to plant cool season lettuce, spinach and chard. I keep looking for slow bolt varieties, do a lot of cutting back and eat them young (only to replant).

One more item, would love to see pictures of your garden when you get a chance! You can see my garden in my private gallery. The plants seem to be loving the SFG -- lots of fresh veggies!

I look forward to seeing your pictures!

View looking from house:

Another view:


Here's some damage to a few of my my bush bean leaves - is it sun burn? Should I shade them?

(Planted in box grid columns Top to bottom then left to right )
Peas:

Beans:

Green Romaine:

freckled romaine:

marigolds:

red beets:

swiss chard:

zucchini:

basil(Trader Joe's transplant):

roma tomato:

broccoli:

cucumber:

cherry tomato:

my pepper plants didn't come up - I think it was to cool for them to germinate.

Your plants look great! You have a lot of variety there... you are sure to get some yummy veggies!

Be sure to post more pictures as your plants grow.

Shoda,
Thank you for you feed back and encouragement. This is my first garden. I'm using a combination of Mel's mix/techniques from his New Sq Ft Gardening book and some old pest and feeding tonic remedies from the Jerry Baker gardening series. Today I just sprayed Jerry Baker's vegetable cleanup tonic over the whole garden with a mister bottle.(1/4 cup each of liq. dish soap, chewing tobacco tea, and mouthwash, mixed with 5 gallons of water in a 5 gal. bucket(enough to last a while)
The Swiss chard seems to be doing just fine - no signs of pest or disease yet.
Here's a good picture of them:

Here's what appears to be some type of damage to some of my zucchini leaves. Leaf miners?

More miners on my zucchini leaves?

I am not sure what that is on the zucchini plants but it doesn't look like leaf miners. The leaf miners that hit chard are specific to chard, beets and spinach. They supposedly don't jump to zucchini plants.

Does anyone else recognize these bugs?

I'm having a problem with my swiss chard, is this leaf miner?

pat&kathy wrote:
Today I just sprayed Jerry Baker's vegetable cleanup tonic over the whole garden with a mister bottle.(1/4 cup each of liq. dish soap, chewing tobacco tea, and mouthwash, mixed with 5 gallons of water in a 5 gal. bucket(enough to last a while)

I would worry about spreading tobacco mosaic with the tobacco tea.

Definitely not leaf miners. Not sure what it is.

It is hard for me to see with the picture but I think the top of the leaf has a leaf miner. Do you see a channel so to speak with a dark speck in it? If so that is a leaf miner. Sprays don't help unless it is a spray you might not want on your veggies because the bug is save inside the leaf.

They are taking over my chard, spinach and beets. I will try to get my camera working so I can take a picture of it to post.

I was reading about leaf miners and they say to cut and toss the infected leaves before the bugs hatch into more flies. I also read that the best cure is prevention and to cover these plants with an insect netting so the flies can't get in to lay their eggs. I haven't done that yet but I think I may re-plant a square and cover it to try to see if that solves the problem.

The swiss chard that is next to the beans is having the leaf miner problems, but I have two swiss chart in a square with some siam basil and the leaf miners have not touched those two plants, I wonder if this will work, to soon to tell.
Mark