Disease problem

[Pam Gibbs]

The top leaves on my basil are developing wet black spots. It looks like wet black paint.

It started on the California Wonder peppers I started from seed. The lower leaves started with the wet black spots, and when the leaf was about halfway black it would fall off the plant. I immediately pulled up the first one and put it and all the mulch around it in a sealed plastic bag and took it away. I have sprayed with both daconil and maneb and a copper mixture recommended by a friend. It spread to all those peppers and then to the jalapenos, the red peppers, and the yellow peppers. I did actually get three or four green fruits before the plants succumbed to the disease.

It has now spread to the basil and to the four o'clocks on the edge of the garden. I pulled up the four o'clocks, etc.

The basil is interplanted with my cucumbers and is near my eggplants and I am afraid they are next.

I use drip irrigation, but that does not help so much when you get too much rain, and we had nearly triple our normal rainfall in June.

I have looked at the various online pictures and cannot find anything that looks like this.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[Beecrofter]

Anytime you get a free film of water on the leaf surfaces your plants are subject to leaf spotting diseases, both bacterial and fungal. You would be needing to apply your spray prior to infection otherwise it is ineffective.

[Pam Gibbs]

Thank you!.

I started spraying regularly with the daconil about the time the peppers were eight inches tall, when I started spraying the tomatoes to prevent all of the fungal diseases tomatoes get as soon as the weatther gets warm and wet. So the peppers had a couple of applications of daconil and one of maneb before this black stuff started. I have never seen it before. Maybe the copper would have helped had I gotten it on the plants before they got sick, I don't know.

I have pulled up and destroyed all the affected plants and even some nearby that were not affected, and have plastic on the soil to solarize it. I don't know what else to do.

Of course I never sprayed the basil or the four o'clocks with anything because I have never had sick basil or four o'clocks before.