In my backyard, I’ve got a whole mess of herbs for the summer: lavender, lovage, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, tarragon, mint, chives, summer savory, and some vegetables (tomatoes & peppers.) About half the herbs look fine, and the other half have developed discoloration in the leaves and holes. (See the photos.)
What’s going on here? What do I do to fix it?
Some background: It’s been awfully cool and wet recently here in Chicago. I would say for the last three weeks it’s been raining and cloudy. Overnight lows have been falling into the lower 50s, and the highs have probably been averaging somewhere in the upper 60s/lower 70s in this time period.
I’ve grown basil in this soil before, without any problem. Tomatoes as well. My tomatoes seem to have OK leaves, but the pepper plants are also showing signs of holes (but they have alread sprouted peppers.) The sage plant is quite sturdy (3 years old), so I’m not too worried about that one. It’s the basil that’s bugging me.
Also, I planted five thyme plants. Only one of them is looking healthy. The other four are straggly, and three of them have lost all their leaves.
pulykamell, are you absolutely certain that there are no pests attacking your herbs? The picture of the basil seem to show more gnawing than just holes. I would suspect a pest of some sort, before I would the quality of the soil.
I’ll dig around in my herbals and see what else I can find.
I suspected critter damage…but there’s also funny little black splotches on the basil. Maybe I’ll just get out the pesticide. I really would prefer not to, but if it is in fact critters, they’ll eat 'em all before the herbs have a chance to grow.
You don’t have to go to pesticides immediately – slugs sounds right, given the recent weather. Put out saucers of beer (the cheap stuff) and they’ll do themselves in. Plus use netting, as quiltguy suggests. Esp. for food crops, I’d hang back a while before going for the pesticides.