Ground Cherry Leaf Problems

[Setec Astronomy]

My ground cherries are frequently the most problematic plants I grow regarding leaf disease. I wonder if anyone has any help with this, what kind of disease and how to mitigate.

What I've got right now seems to start at the edges of the leaf like this:

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Then progresses to more like this (unfortunately I'd already cut off the worst ones before deciding to take pictures):

IMG_2745.JPG

IMG_2746.JPG

This seems to be slightly different than the other common problem which is the leaves turning yellow like this:

IMG_2748.JPG

I did realize this morning that I've let these plants get quite dry in the planters, I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

[Mark_Thompson]

Think it’s the same as mine, or different?

48041D4A-5192-437A-A9EC-D4CC07748000.jpeg

[Setec Astronomy]

Looks pretty much the same...what winds up happening is the leaves turn yellow and fall off, the plant gets weak and starts dropping the fruit before it's mature. I have sprayed Daconil in the past but I try to stick to OMRI-listed. Looking today my tomatoes seem to be catching up in the blight department so I'm going to try a good dousing with Howler and if not I may have to go to copper (OMRI, but the first time I used it, it turned my sprayer blue, so I prefer not to use that) or Daconil. I've tried to be proactive this year, rather than reactive, but it's not working.

[Shule]

I wonder if the white parts are from thrips.

[Shule]

It might be downy mildew.

[Mark_Thompson]

Shule’s guess is as good as mine, I usually don’t treat them and let them outrun it. I try to stick with organic products on my tomatoes like you do, I’ve found sulfur to be better than copper for foliar diseases in the past.

[Setec Astronomy]

I'm noticing that the turning yellow and falling off seems unrelated to the white spots. Some of the yellow leaves have the white spots, and some don't. I'm considering the possibility that the white spots are some sort of phytotoxicity from spraying too late in the morning on a sunny day.

[Setec Astronomy]

Well, thanks to this thread: post75785.html#p75785 I found out I have spider mites on my ground cherries. Whether that's what was causing the spots I pictured above, I don't know, but at this time in the season I always get "bronzing" or as Shule called it in the other thread, "stonewashing" of the leaves, which I've now discovered is a symptom of spider mites. I just sprayed PureCrop1 on them, hoping that will reign in the mites, but the plants are pretty far gone at this point between whatever is eating them and the dry heat.

If this helps anyone else, I took a leaf to look at (which actually had the telltale spider mite webbing around the edge) and I used my 2.25X magnifier and I could just barely see something moving in the web. So I borrowed a microscope and was able to identify a spider mite. They really are tiny, for all I know I have spider mites on my tomatoes, too, but they don't seem too damaged. For that matter, I'm not sure the spider mites are the reason the ground cherries are in such bad shape, but since I now know I have them I figured I'd better treat.

PS Shule mentioned in that other thread that thrips can cause larger white spots, perhaps that's what I was dealing with earlier in the year. Maybe by next year I will have gotten a microscope so I can be a mite hunter. Oh, and the PureCrop1 did a good job getting rid of aphids earlier in the year, unless it was just the heat that killed them.

[Wildcat82]

Well, thanks to this thread: post75785.html#p75785 I found out I have spider mites on my ground cherries. Whether that's what was causing the spots I pictured above, I don't know, but at this time in the season I always get "bronzing" or as Shule called it in the other thread, "stonewashing" of the leaves, which I've now discovered is a symptom of spider mites. I just sprayed PureCrop1 on them, hoping that will reign in the mites, but the plants are pretty far gone at this point between whatever is eating them and the dry heat.

If this helps anyone else, I took a leaf to look at (which actually had the telltale spider mite webbing around the edge) and I used my 2.25X magnifier and I could just barely see something moving in the web. So I borrowed a microscope and was able to identify a spider mite. They really are tiny, for all I know I have spider mites on my tomatoes, too, but they don't seem too damaged. For that matter, I'm not sure the spider mites are the reason the ground cherries are in such bad shape, but since I now know I have them I figured I'd better treat.

PS Shule mentioned in that other thread that thrips can cause larger white spots, perhaps that's what I was dealing with earlier in the year. Maybe by next year I will have gotten a microscope so I can be a mite hunter. Oh, and the PureCrop1 did a good job getting rid of aphids earlier in the year, unless it was just the heat that killed them.

Most ground cherries I've seen on youtube grow into a bushy plant but mine always grow horizontally along the ground making it impossible to spray for mites. This year I tried growing them in straw bales so I could keep their branches off the ground. It worked pretty well.

I also grew some Korean melons in a couple straw bales adjacent to the ground cherries. In late spring, the leaves looked exactly like the pictures you posted for your ground cherries with speckled checkerboard leaves. It's impossible to spray long viney plants so I left them alone. Eventually they just outgrew the problem and produced a good number of melons. I'm guessing mites since they attack everything else in my garden. Maybe they just left the melons alone to find something else better to snack on.

[Setec Astronomy]

Most ground cherries I've seen on youtube grow into a bushy plant but mine always grow horizontally along the ground making it impossible to spray for mites.

I grow mine in tomato cages so I basically have them growing straight up.