Post Punk Kitchen Forum

any ideas on what happened to my spinach?
someone suggested it got too cold for it but i think a bug is eating it.

all my other leafy veggies (kale and several types of lettuce) are fine

did you fertilize it and spill some on the leaves?

nope.

it's been within the past couple days as i swear it was not like that over the weekend.
it's been raining quite a bit for several days. not sure that would have anything to do with it though. :-/

It looks like leafminer damage, from fly larvae. They tunnel between the upper/lower epidermis, so fresh damage will look translucent, before drying up. If you look at the undersides of leaves you may see little white eggs, which can be rubbed off.

i figured it was something like that.
i will check it out when i get home.

is it weird they are only eating my spinach?

Lots of bugs are fairly host specific. Spinach leafminers also wreak havoc on beets and chard, and generally minor damage on other related plants, like NZ spinach and lambs quarters.

the same thing is now happening to my spinach, chard, and beets. i don't see any eggs. lisapunk and i are close distance-wise and now i'm wondering if it is all the rain we've been getting.

poor leafys.

Hi, I just looked it up in my gardening book and it says that it is downy mildew caused by wet and cold weather, so you are right in thinking that it could be the rain. It says to pick off the diseased leaves as no treatment is available. To prevent it from occurring (a bit late for you guys, I know), practise crop rotation and make sure that the soil is well drained.

If, on the other hand, it is a leaf miner, it also says to pick off the leaves.

crop rotation and soil drainage aren't an issue for me. we move stuff around every year and the beds are raised, so the soil drains well. it's just been raining so much that nothing can dry out before it gets drowned again. oh well. i'll pick off the crappy looking leaves and hope that the next few days of forecasted sunshine are enough to give the poor things a chance to breathe.
thanks for looking it up!

i believe this is the first year we've ever done spinach so crop rotation shouldnt be an issue.
we plant our stuff in raised beds so it should be better drainage (?)

i think it's just weve had SO MUCH rain.

poor spinach :-(