stumped by spots on leaves

Hello everyone,
First time posting, I hope I'm doing this right. apologies if Im not..

Been growing for 6 years or so and have had good success.
No big scale stuff, just for myself so its always been manageable.
I went away for 5 days on vacation giving watering instructions to my brother / room mate.
Best I can tell he did fine. If anything he over watered but if thats true I dont think it was a huge problem, the tubs were just heavier than I expected to the lift test after the few hot summer days i was away.

When i returned there were new browning spots on a handfull of the plants, particularly on my biggest one.

I've tried diagnosing the new spots the best I could with google but its a messy search and I'm not sure quite how to describe my situation to cut out the noise in results.

You can see an aphid or two in some of the closeups but i dont think they are causing the problem, most of the spots had no bugs or pests that I could recognize. It seemed like the aphids were attracted to the weak part of the leaf? Definitely not sure.. thats why I'm here asking for some help.

My googling made me suspect it could be manganese deficiency but none of the images made me feel "oh thats definitely what I'm seeing.."

Otherwise the plants are healthy and happy, just worried this could turn into something worse. Trying to do whatever I can as soon as i can to either fix the problem of cut losses.

As far as feeding I use the Fox Farm Trio every other watering and Flush with sledgehammer about every 3 weeks.
Most are receiving just Big Bloom and Grow Big but the couple that started to flower already have also had Tigerbloom in their mix. Of the 2 that were flowering only one had spots (The bigger of the 2) and the other (smaller) didnt. Spots were mostly on my biggest Plant with the stake structure around it (I trimmed aggressively to remove those leaves) but they appeared on almost all the plants to some degree. I can say that my smallest plants in the Blue tubs row barely had any spotting or none at all.

Many thanks in advance for any help, advice, or recommendations.

So here are some pictures:

Septoria Leaf Spot. If they aren't flowering yet I've had success with Liquid Copper fungicide spray every 5 days.

Do you have a flower garden nearby? Could have been brought over by the aphids.

Sirtalis hit it on the head....leaf spot septoria....that one pic is some pest,but those spots are leaf spot for sure....pluck infected leaves and toss them far away from the plants cause it spreads fast...and humidity makes it much worse!!!!
It starts with big bottom leaves and moves up the plant.

Copper spray slows it down,but it's like pm for me....once I got it no matter what I did I couldn't ultimately get rid of it...just plucked infected leaves every day to slow it down....
I never saw it before 3 years ago,once it infected my outdoor garden it has come back every year

Rdickenson said:

Copper spray slows it down,but it's like pm for me....once I got it no matter what I did I couldn't ultimately get rid of it...just plucked infected leaves every day to slow it down....
I never saw it before 3 years ago,once it infected my outdoor garden it has come back every year

Click to expand...

Yea it's pretty intense. I'm going through the ringer this year with both septoria and botrytis. Learning some big lessons in preventative measures rather than cures.

Thank you both for your replies.
Sirtalis I do have a rather large flower & vegetable garden nearby within the yard.
I'll try the copper tomorrow after doing a final pass looking for any more spotted leaves to remove.

Rdickenson I'll take your advice and do my best to remove infected leaves daily.
Have you still had success when dealing with this? I'm reminded of my tomatoes that get blight almost every season but it never seems to matter much in the end, tomato wise that is.

I havent had many problems this year so have been doing zero when it comes to any kind of pest control. in the past i spray my plants with neem pretty much all season long until flowering.
Now I'm wishing id stuck to my protocol , maybe that could have helped protect the plants from this?

Appreciate your answers and time,
thank you both.

The first time I got septoria it was because of my watering technique. I literally watered overhead and splashed the soil onto my tomatoes, spreading fungus like wildfir. They got septoria that year, leading me to do some research and find liquid copper as a solution during veg.

My guess is your brother had poor technique that splashed soil. One thing I do now is mulch, so that no matter what no soil can make contact with the leaves.

One thing that is taking me a couple seasons to realize is that we (outdoor growers) always have to be taking preventative measures. It's when we think everything is fine that we get slammed with something that is either incurable (borytis) or hard to get rid of (septoria / pests).

In all honesty, I'd be ordering an antifungal solution ASAP. They're about to flower and you will not be able to spray anything when buds form.

sirtalis said:

The first time I got septoria it was because of my watering technique. I literally watered overhead and splashed the soil onto my tomatoes, spreading fungus like wildfir. They got septoria that year, leading me to do some research and find liquid copper as a solution during veg.

My guess is your brother had poor technique that splashed soil. One thing I do now is mulch, so that no matter what no soil can make contact with the leaves.

One thing that is taking me a couple seasons to realize is that we (outdoor growers) always have to be taking preventative measures. It's when we think everything is fine that we get slammed with something that is either incurable (borytis) or hard to get rid of (septoria / pests).

In all honesty, I'd be ordering an antifungal solution ASAP. They're about to flower and you will not be able to spray anything when buds form.

Click to expand...

thanks again Sirtalis,
my battle started this morning. This is a hard learning experience. Neem is so cheap and I actually like the smell (not on buds but in the garden). Ay..

My guess is that it was spread from the few pests i noticed but mistakenly thought didn't warrant treating, just a couple bites here and there. I set my brother up with big 19gal tubs pre filled with water and a big pitcher, told him to water via pouring onto the soil. I also have a good inch or two or perilite sitting on top of each tub before the soil.
Also not sure if this offers any protection but I buy all soil for all the tubs. I mix ProMix BX bales with Ocean forest and up to about 40% perilite. I have a great compost going but that is all used exclusively for the vegetables & flowers in my fenced garden in the opposite side of the yard.

My head went from
Excited:
"my plants are doing so well and still have 2 months to keep getting better!"
To -->
Dread:
"oh Geez Septoria has two months to continue to take hold when all the most important work is to be done."

Feels like I'm on a sinking boat armed with a tea cup to battle the water on board
I am grateful to know whats going on and how it may have happened.
If theres one thing thats worse than a damaging problem its having no idea what it is or why it happened.

Any thoughts on using Neem & liquid copper together?
Not mixed but alternating each in applications?

From what I can find online everything matches what you said pretty much exactly, both are helpful but mostly as a preventative measure. Its been a very wet rainy season here.

Its when something goes wrong and I learn nothing that really gets me.
So again, BiG thanks for your help and time.
Cheers and Death to Septoria.

I’m like the others Septoria

NightGardenPerson said:

Any thoughts on using Neem & liquid copper together?
Not mixed but alternating each in applications?

Click to expand...

I would ditch the neem. I never really found it to be effective against bugs and now that you're entering flowering you don't want to spray it on your buds. It's also useless against fungus.

Really your best line of defense is to get that copper on there ASAP. Like order it express, right now. Every day that you wait is going to affect your plants. Use the recommended strength and in the evening because it can cause phytotoxicity. I've overdone it before and it leaves little copper colored burn marks.

There are some better organic insecticides than neem, like Marrone's Venerate. I have a bottle on the way but there are lots of organic growers that swear by it and you can spray up to harvest day (unlike neem).

Once you're further into flower you'll need to stop the copper. It's not safe to smoke. The plants in the black buckets are starting to flower so your window to spray the strong and effective stuff is passing.

You can also look into using Southern Ag's Garden Friendly Fungicide to keep the fungus down. It's made of bacteria that essentially colonize the surface of the leaves and outcompete fungus. Might be effective against septoria but I currently use it to fight botrytis.

I didn't even grow this year because I just sold my house it just it closes in September,I knew I was selling it this summer so I couldn't grow this is the first time and I think about 25 years that I haven't grown outdoors and through all the b******* that I complained about every year something inside of me has died this year because I can't grow....
I will say this I have taken every possible measure done hundreds of hours of research online and the only thing that's really really helped is that copper is it copper powder I think it's that copper sulfate and it really didnt totally cure anything it just kept it at Bay as well as picking the leaves off as they get infected.

I even took a torch to the whole grow area 2 years ago after the first year I got it cuz I heard that helps and burned everything and then early spring I sprayed every part of my whole garden with that copper sulfate spray and it's still came back

I will agree with the above poster do not spray that copper anything past late July

Rdickenson said:

I will agree with the above poster do not spray that copper anything past late July

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I honestly just go by whether or not buds have formed. 8-10 weeks is plenty of time for the copper to wash off. Anything past week 2 of flower is iffy IMO but we all have our personal preference on pesticide tolerance.