Lincoln Pea Plants

First, the good news. I got 9 peas.

Now, the rest of the story.



















Sadly, my Lincoln peas have been visited by powdery mildew.
As far as plant problems go, I originally thought that this is probably not one of the worst problems (an infestation seemed worse) but this disease ended up killing all of my plants. It's very easily spread by contact and by wind.

This is a before shot. On May 16 I picked or cut off all of the infected leaves in the hopes of preventing the problem from spreading. I also moved my lincoln peas away from my sugar snap peas. I found only a couple of infected leaves on the sugar snaps and I got rid of those as well.



Powedery mildew arrives in the form of powderly white spots on the leaves. The leaves slowly (over about two weeks) turn yellow and die. Powdery mildew feels sticky and when you rub the white spots, they reveal yellow spots underneath.



Both my Lincoln peas and my sugar snap peas have had problems all along, but despite the powdery mildew they've continued to grow and are now putting out flowers and producing peas. So I am keeping my hopes up.



One thing about peas is that they don't like too much water. Also, the containers they are in tend to stay wet at the bottom even when the soil on top is bone dry. As a result, I'm never sure whether I'm underwatering or overwatering my peas.

May 17-I inspect my peas after the removal of the powdery mildew leaves. More leaves now have powdery mildew, and on top of that, my peas have been visited by pests! Aphids (tiny bright green bugs that blend in quite well with the pea leaves), whiteflies (I think) and something that looks like gnats. What's wierd is that none of them are moving. They are only on the lower leaves of one plant, but when I look more closely, I can see that there are aphids in the soil. Eeeew. I'm going to have to get over my insect squeamishness. Yesterday I also noticed one of two of the gnat-like insects in the dirt of my sugar snap peas. So I went to OSH and got these sticky aphid, whitefly, etc traps. I attached one to the center post of my sugar snap peas and I tied one to the center post of my lincoln peas. I hope they work. When I was at the store, looking at all the different insecticides and fungicides was overwhelming. I'm gardening organically, and I was under the impression that I could use insecticidal soaps, but when I look at the bottles they all look like poison to me. Poison can be organic, sure, but I don't think we should be putting it on our food. Also, I was hoping to be able to eat the pea leaves too, but with the mildew problems that now seems at worst, unlikely, and at best, unappetizing.