Entire garden, even the weeds, plagued!!

One of my gardens has fallen under some kind of rampant disease and no amount of googling seems to be able to identify it. This stuff is killing / stunting absolutely anything it gets onto from my Moringa trees, peppers, to beans, tomatoes, dill, even the bull-nettles are sick! It severely stunts the growth of anything it touches. I believe it started on cilantro and spread like fire across the entire garden, even the asparagus is sick! It isn't the typical brown leaf or spot either, they go from being green to straight into putrid rotting, no inbetween! I've tried keeping the weeds out, drying everything out, this stuff is in the dirt and crawls right back up. Even the raspberries are brown sticks now!

The garden is watered by a single sprinkler head. I have a plot directly next to this one, about 12 feet separation that uses the same water source but with misters and tapes, so far whatever this is only affects a corner of that one. So far I can only determine that its spread on contact and through watering. This is going into JUNE, everything dries out and there is no standing water on the plants.

winter crops, like swiss chard, broccoli, collards, etc, don't seem to be affected so if nothing can be done, it will be turned into an exclusively winter garden.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qk24yry84oac1d3/IMG_20170522_190923_005.jpg?dl=0
 (bullnettle weed)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lrfvhv6dbojetzk/IMG_20170522_190937_451.jpg?dl=0
 (Pole beans)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nc07s5o0j932t58/IMG_20170522_190955_639.jpg?dl=0
 (sick Asparagus and Moringa)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghfjjpcgveh6ugb/IMG_20170522_191132_854.jpg?dl=0
 (Sick Moringa / new growth)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b3zgd938g5ez857/IMG_20170522_191018_139.jpg?dl=0
 (healthy moringa for comparison)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/59whs20gtxdb639/IMG_20170522_191049_528.jpg?dl=0
 (Morning glory!?!? Too?!)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jyowf8d8wz9nxpx/IMG_20170522_191228_156.jpg?dl=0
 (Tomato)


https://www.dropbox.com/s/wobgpaadw9nqxyb/IMG_20161115_164316_404.jpg?dl=0
 (same plot with the disease but six months earlier in November.)

What Happened??!? What do I have to do to fix this and stop it!!? I would have already fallowed the plot under save for the trees and asparagus but its shared with a family member and they won't allow that!

The only thing I can think of deficiency wise is calcium or zinc since the soil is sandy and I've had end blossom rot on tomatoes in past years. But deficiencies don't spread on contact! Why can't life just be simple?

Bacterial canker?

I haven't seen anything on plant stems that would indicate bacterial cankers, its also not Southern Stem Blight which I've had problems with in the past (pretty much why I don't plant peppers anymore).

Might be many different things...

Were the broad-leaved plants damaged by hail?

Did you bring any mulch in from off site?

The trunk is whats left of last years growth so I don't go poking holes in the root bulb/knot thing in the spring while they are still dormant. Both the healthy and the unhealthy ones still have stumps, they will eventually break off the rest of the way for disposal and don't go below the soil / freeze line. I feed them several times a year with Chilated Nitrate(organic) and pelleted chicken manure, so nitrogen shouldn't be any issue. The critter on the bull-nettle is a common spider and there hasn't been any hail here in years. I can't imagine the sprinkler causing damage as it was hitting the trees directly last year with no signs of damage, not even yellow leaves.

I didn't notice the leaf miners before... I'm going outside again tonight to walk my dog and I'll take a closer look at them.  They don't solve the asparagus and Moringa trees though.

In April of 2016, we had a 100 year flood and a month of rain afterwards but I don't see that being the cause since the summer and the rest of that year still saw vigorous growth, but I haven't ruled it out either. This year, nothing has any kind of vigor, except a few rows in the adjacent garden that so far has avoided this.

On some plants its like edge rust, others are missing leaves or the leaves are deformed, followed by necrosis, etc, on others like the nettle it browns from the outer edge. Dill turns brown, asparagus browns, Moringa leaves curl inward and yellow at the edges first, then yellow and fall off. As far as I can tell, its limited to the leaves.

I also have every pest known to man out here from swarms of leaf hoppers, stink bugs, shield bugs, squash vine borers, grasshoppers, snails, etc. No amount of pest control, weeding, etc, will get rid of them since I'm near a shaded water source and in the middle of a forest. However, they never caused any significant problems either. Crinkle virus is out and about but has only ever affected about five plants at most.

I suppose I should say the only plants not affected are nut-grass(common name / weed), and collard plants. Eggplant seem fairly resistant to it.


-edit-

I used to. The mulch (woodchips) I still have lying around, have been used since last year and in both gardens, as well as newspaper. The woodchips I still have piled up (about 30 meter/yards away) are largely dark and composted. The other woodchips I used in spring of 2016 are from on-site when having electrical right-of-ways serviced(fresh). Most of them got washed away in the flood. . I shifted to Johnsongrass hay from the neighbor which had weathered too long being rained on and was unsuitable for feeding. I discontinued that when I discovered it was the perfect haven for forest lice, snails, millipedes, centipedes, etc. It did do wonders for the topsoil though! The remaining haybales are for compost use with lawn trimmings, among other things. I inevitably chopped some of the woodchips into the soil while weeding so a portion of two rows are a bit slow to grow, even with supplemental nitrogen, but they were never diseased. The last time I added any kind of mulch to the garden was sometime last year.

Now all my mulch is sitting in a big pile away from the gardens and I'm probably going to use it as land fill for some of the weak spots on the levies or holes.

If an entire area of genetically unrelated plants are effected and stunted, my detective work would go to the weed/feed fertilizers of your neighbors or their use of preen and round up related products.   Runoff from the flood that settled into the soil of your plot could contain significant salts and chemical residues from the surrounding plots. I don't know where you are located but after Hurricane Sandy with excessive flooding from ocean waters that remained on land for a very long time, a lot of people had issues with over salted land and growing anything at all.

I tend to lean towards there being enough chemicals in the ground to not kill the plants but considerably weaken them, allowing their defenses to dip and then be susceptible to other issues as well.  We all know that monoculture is dangerous and that is why we plant in a polyculture way, but if all non-related plants are having issues, it is either an areal spray issue (maybe your neighbors are spraying pesticides?) or a soil issue.

I once had an issue years ago, before I knew any better, spraying some roundup on  big poison ivy cluster. about 6 feet away there is my wild raspberry patch. Though the raspberry didn't die from the round up spray, the next year it came up looking like a dna mutation. Needless to say, we didn't eat the raspberries that came off that bush, and we cut it to the ground and removed its roots and didn't plant anything there but mulch for a few years.

Good luck figuring it out!

Nitrogen burning?
When and how did you add your fertiliser?

@Alexandra Clark

I'm in the middle of nowhere and no one else around grows anything. If it were chemicals from the only two or so houses up stream, it would be diluted in 10s, of millions of gallons flushing by per minute. (Trust me, a lot of stuff got carried away with it.) I recovered most of it but my fancy wheelbarrow probably ended up in someone else yard.

This whole thing is an enigma to me. The affected plants are all roughly within the diameter of my sprinkler, except for a few in my other garden. The same water is being applied to both gardens through similar methods (overhead). I thought it might be saline burn but it would have affected everything if that were the case.

-edit-

Nitrogen is added by free casting pellets across the tops of rows, with sprinkle to larger plants. I dabbled with mixing some in water and applying via sprayer but I killed my lemon thyme doing that. The same spray had no negative effects on anything else, so I guess Thyme plants are just delicate. Pity, I saved it from root rot earlier in the year. Bought another, its going fine. This situation was going on before dabbling with a liquid spray though. I've always free cast nitrogen and phosphate, on the rare occasion I add greensand, its directly to holes when planting.

-edit-

sleep.

Well then we can count that theory out. I know in this area of suburbia I shudder to think of all the chemicals put on all the lawns. Every year in the tidal areas that are not well flushed we get algae blooms from all the nitrogen fertilizer run off. They are trying to pass legislation now that would ban the use of in-organic mineral fertilizer because of this and its effect on the shell fishery beds of Long Island Sound.

Hope you figure it out. If you have inadvertently over nitrogenized the soil in that area, you could always do a water leach to flush the ground. Good luck.

Not knowing your location and climate makes it difficult to offer guesses. And not being able to see what else is going on in your surroundings is just as tough. But even so, these are my thoughts......

You're applying nitrogen and phosphorous regularly but not potassium.
You removed mulching material and maintain bare earth.
You're not regularly digging in compost or manures.
You experienced a major flood followed by excessive rains.
You didn't mention rejuvenating the soil after the major leaching events (flood and rains).
You seeing the major part of the problem in the areas that you're irrigating via overhead.
It is affecting multiple plant species.

Two possible diagnoses come to mind....
1- fungal disease.
2- nutrient deficiency.

I'm no expert, but if this were my garden the first thing I would do is a simple and cheap test for phosphorous and potassium levels. A potassium deficiency could account for some of the symptoms. So I'd like to rule out that as being the problem before I'd look further. Ive been told that potassium leaches easily out of the soil, and your soil experienced a major leaching event. In low potassium soils, you can get a crop or two before everything reaches a crisis and the plants become over stressed. Without incorporating organic material into the soil to help retain nutrients, things can leach out even faster.

Next, if I had an ag extension office or ag college in the area, I'd take a bunch of sick plants there for them to look at. Or better yet, have the ag agent out to my place to take a look-see. An on site inspection by someone trained in ag can often solve a mystery.

Is it an extreme nuitrient imbalance?

Potassium is on my list of possible deficiencies, along with calcium, zinc, cloride, and magnesium. No, I don't apply potassium except to my banana trees, in the form of green sand. They are the nearest plants to the diseased garden and don't seem to have any gripes (supposedly they are supposed to get a hand full of greensand per month.)

Texas, USDA 8B/9

Yes, I maintain bare earth now since so many vermin, bugs, snails, slugs, snakes, among other things were living in the mulch. I also have access to something more than a 5GPM water well so the mulch isn't entirely needed anymore. I originally put it down to try and retain soil moisture and block weeds but it did little to block weeds, mainly nut grass which will grow through anything because of its sharp tips. It pokes through onions, cardboard, anything. The only way to get rid of it is either molasses or by thoroughly combing every square inch. (I pulled it off with my huglekulture bed before it got washed away!)

Its very sandy soil on a flood plain so I may grab a few bags of potash in one form or another... I can always use it on my bananas if its not the case. Seems walmart sells some cheap testing strips for NPK. I don't expect them to be very accurate but if its a major deficiency then it will show up.

Many thanks... and if its not potassium.. there isn't much I can do I guess except wait until I can till everything under and keep it a winter only garden.

I'll take a stab at this too. I'm leaning toward herbicide exposure via drift, especially since you mentioned how they went from being green straight into putrid rotting. Poisons are fast acting like that. Herbicide drift can, if wind conditions are right, affect plants over a mile away, sometimes several miles. Legislation has even been passed in some areas prohibiting herbicide and pesticide application on breezy days, and if people choose to apply on windy days anyway and get caught, can get in big trouble with monetary fines. Image 191049_528 with the bleached spots and burned upward leaf curl, and image 191132_852 with the new young growth burned leads me to believe herbicides could be the culprit, along with it affecting both weeds and food crops.

Nic Foro wrote:Nitrogen is added by free casting pellets across the tops of rows, with sprinkle to larger plants.

Much of the damage is consistent with fertilizer burning...

I've free cast both gardens in the same manner but there's no harm in laying off nitrogen applications since the adjacent plot is a year younger than the problem one. I never dumped tons of the stuff on the plants so nitrogen burning never crossed my mind, however http://extension.umd.edu/growit/fertilizerpesticide-burn-vegetables
 is pretty accurate as far as what the bean row looks like. I can't imagine herbicide drift but its possible, its so far limited to this one spot, drift would affect bullnettles and other weeds outside of the garden space.

I'm leaning that this is narrowing down to both excess nitrogen and a severe deficiency in potassium. I'll have to see what that does and cross my fingers...

Many thanks for everyone taking the time to run through this with me and pop in suggestions.

Sorry that I was slow to think of fertilizer burn... I haven't applied fertilizers to my garden for decades. Hard to remember that other people use them.

I don't see any indications that the garden is deficient in potassium, which is typically characterized by yellow margins on the leafs.

I'm still crawling through .edu pages and the damage seems to fit somewhere between herbicidal damage(largely ruled out), foliage burn(excess fertilizers), and tip burn(Excess fertilizers / deficiency). Herbicidal damage doesn't fit, area is far too limited and localized within the watered area, and no one else is around to be spraying.

The culprit list includes: burning from excess fertilizers, burning from nutrient deficiency, or disease. I have had end blossom rot on my tomatoes in the past, misshapen leaves (not to this extent), watermelons have also rotted just last year, so calcium levels are heavily suspect. Never had anything like this before.

I will see what I can do about getting the soil tested professionally, otherwise I'm just guessing.

-edit-

I inspected my gourds and found little hair like worms munching on them, (leaf miners) I'll have to ruin their day in the morning after the storms pass. (BT / Dipel).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ltwe124187pjq1v/IMG_20170523_184532_395.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3qj3y4wndwfur0/IMG_20170523_184538_587.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/09g42c3ejsrdtc9/IMG_20170523_184710_006.jpg?dl=0 (worms)

However, I checked the beans and other plants and found no such worms.

Beans
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9oewxp5h57ntafd/IMG_20170523_185334_454.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/un4ehvu73vqq1vp/IMG_20170523_185346_128.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/un4ehvu73vqq1vp/IMG_20170523_185346_128.jpg?dl=0

Heirloom okra and celosa firestorms
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3tu4ladaw6pd3t8/IMG_20170523_183936_629.jpg?dl=0

Peppers
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqa53jnznquhp84/IMG_20170523_183607_590.jpg?dl=0

Not sure if you are in the USA or not, but if you are send a soil sample to Brookside Labs or Logan Labs for testing and if you are an organic grower ( I would assume so) pay for the use of organicalac on growabundantgardens.com.  Sounds to me that you may have nutrient lockout and or fertilizer burn.  A proper soil test is the first step in a great garden.  Organicalc will help you amend your soil with organic amendments to get it mineral balanced.  I took a spot that would barely grow anything and have turned it into a very productive garden in a very short time using it.  You will more than likely use less and less amendments as time goes by and you get your soil balanced.  This year I had to add a small amount of manganese and a minuscule amount of boron, but the rest of my amendments were nothing more than my nitrogen source.  My garden is quite productive now and I have very little in the way of pests or disease other than a constant battle with slugs later in the summer.

Soil test results came back. No Potassium, magnesium, or copper, in the soil excess salts. I think the excess salts are from the nitrogen pellets 21-0-0. The troubled garden perked up a little bit after a fair amount of rain and at this point I'm letting it sit idle until the winter, weeds included.

See attachments for page 1/2 of soil test.

Treatment on page two: Leaching the salt off by drains or by deep watering.
Treating with Humic acid & molasses also recommended on 4-6Wk schedule.
Getting irrigation water tested is recommended.
Soil inoculates are also recommended to fix atmospheric nitrogen.
Treatment with sulfur as well to activate calcium and magnesium.


Green sand will cover potassium, iron, etc, while leaching. Sulfur, copper, etc, can all be sourced locally.
Epsom salt isn't mentioned in soil treatment, probably because salt levels are already excessively high and should be brought down before fixing magnesium.

I may entertain going back to using Johnson grass hay as mulch or lawn clippings in my gardens. Its a question of if its worth giving copperheads another incentive to invade. Killed two more of them just a day or two ago, there is no shortage no matter how clean I and cut I keep my lawn, being in the middle of a forest. At least until I cut the forest down and keep the big oaks and broad leaves. Broad leaves compost well.

Wow! That's a very high soil pH. Get that lowered, and I bet a lot of the other issues will resolve themselves.