Gourd dying

Weeding Warrior · Joined: 17 Jun 2003 Posts: 6

I am growing six vines of gourds in a section of my garden, five out of the six vines are growing fine and are now about four feet long, but one is not growing at all now. It was the first vine tocome up after planting and it grow very fast intill it was about six inches tall, but it has not grown at all for about two weeks now. Just a few days ago the leaves started turning yellow and and there are big brown spots on the edgesof the leaves. I need to know if this is a disease and if so what to do to keep it from spreding to my other gourds.

P.S. The gourd has been geting plenty of water.

dragonfly · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 4:31 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure why that happens, but it does. The same thing happened with my gourds this year too. Out of all the ones I planted, most of them are just not doing anything, and a few are going great guns. I don't see any pests on them, but they don't look diseased either. I would just pull the one that's not doing anything, but I doubt it matters whether you do or not.

Richard Shelburne · Joined: 16 Jul 2003 Posts: 4 Location: Midland, Texas

Are you giving the gourds too much water? They do need a lot of water when they put on fruit, but less when they are small - you may be experiencing some root rot, or perhaps some fungus.
Try a little bit of seaweed as a foliar, or garrett juice - it might perk them up - also, a little fish emulsion might help
But, if it is fungus in the soil, try cornmeal! Like Aunt Jemima or horticultural cornmeal - it is a really good fungus fighter!
Also look for squash bugs - they will attack gourd plants too - try some vinegar -Pepper tea if you have them - but be careful about using it a lot when blooms apear - may discourage the pollinating insects.
Richard