Go Away Bad Fungus

Gardening here for the first time last summer and fall, I came to notice that there is a fungus problem in this yard. Last year, my squash vines and zucchini plant succumbed to powdery mildew. My tomato plants got some fungus (can’t tell which, might have been a combo of sorts), but they still produced good fruit.

At the beginning of fall, I started noticing some pretty bad black patches in the grass, as well as spots on almost all of the tree leaves in the yard. At the bottom of one tree (which appears to be a maple), there were dozens of new, short branch shoots, covered in dead black leaves. I just want to know where in this country I can garden that has a short winter and no fungus! Yeah I can dream.

Well I knew that at some point the fungus would start showing itself this year, and here it is. From looking at pictures on the internet, it appears this is anthracnose. It is on the lower leaves of my cucumber plants. Luckily, all the fruits on the vines look fine, and the stems and upper leaves are clean, but the lower leaves look terrible.

Anthracnose on cucumber leaf

I have decided to use a product called GreenCure on the plants. I hope it works, but what’s really bugging me is that I have this row of cucumbers planted next to some large ligustrums, and all of their leaves have spots on them. And given that the fungus spores are transferred by wind and rain and the ligustrums are much taller than my vines, well I don’t know how well anything will work in this case. It all might turn out just fine, as long as I can keep up with the GreenCure applications. And I keep telling myself that as long as I get a few pounds of cukes then I really can’t complain. I’ve already gotten 1 lb 2 ozs, so unless something really freaky happens I’m sure I’ll get more.

Just go away, fungus!!!