At least the original Sevin, with carbaryl, could burn leaves pretty easily if overused. Not sure about the new mix, but cypermethrin is a pyrethroid, and those will burn leaves if applied in strong sunlight. In order to avoid phytotoxicity, might be cautious using the stuff.

Not sure what is wrong but everything usually looks very stressed out, and I see little evidence of bugs attacking. Overdoing chemicals? Soil born disease? Water issues? Maybe the well water has something bad in it? Those peppers look terrible for this time of year. Stressed plants will be more bothered by every little problem in nature.

A lot of the hot weather seedlings will be very susceptible to problems when the weather is cool and wet, even if it doesn't frost. Beans, cukes, squash seedlings can be sickly in cool weather.

Maybe you are having the same issues you have been having the last couple weeks in this thread? Lots of garden issues

Maybe you are still having issues that you started with last month? Leaf issues already Tomato & Pepper Or maybe Sprouts dying overnight, pathogen or bugs?

Or perhaps you might be having some of the same problems you had last year:

What is wrong with my zucchini plant?

Some minimill peppers not looking great

Lots of garden issues?

What is wrong with my pepper plants?

Yellow tomato leaves

What is wrong with my sunflower leaves?

Plants suddenly dying next to healthy plants

Trying to be a little more helpful and constructive, I'd agree that it really doesn't look like insects. The fact that you have these issues with both squash and Solanaceae makes disease a little less likely. Have you had your soil tested? I haven't heard much about fertilization, and you may be seriously lacking in something important. Is *anything* growing well? Is this a new issue, or is it something you see every year?

I've been reading through your threads this year and have agreed with most everything that has been said so far. One thing I don't recall seeing any mention of was if you used any fertilizer. Fertilizer burn manifests in ways that are similar to many of your pics. Damaged yellow and brown leaf edges, leaves yellowing and dying, discolored and malformed seedlings... Is it possible you used too much fertilizer before or after planting?

Rodney

Good point. Too much, rather than too little, fertilizer will also damage plants. Again, what do you know about nutrients in your bed? I should add that uncomposted manure will hurt plants, but might make leaves very green before they die. What soil amendments do you use?

The consensus about fertilization appears rational. All those plants look pale and desperate for something. Unhealthy plants will attract more unwanted hosts than a well fed happy plant.

It doesn't look like the soil has been amended much with organic materials, are you adding chemical fertilizers? Maybe too much to make up for it? Any special additives you use? Hard to believe you would use no fertilizer, maybe too much.

You said you use well water but are limited in volume. I wonder if chemicals could be getting into the well water.

I have not had soil tested but I am starting to agree with you. I have mulched evry year with pine needles for 10 years. I used to use a lot of eggshells and coffee grounds all over. I stopped that a few years ago. I apply 10-10-10 3-4 times a year. I also applied some Alaska Fish fertilizer this year and might have overdone it with that. If anything to much fertilizer.

I found more slugs today, small. I have had DE and sluggo out not sure why I am still getting slugs.

Growing good are potatoes, tomatoes, asparagus, beets are now doing good, corn, sunflowers, several zuccininni, squash and cucs are doing good, some are not.

Peppers do seem to be struggling a lot. Outside of new sprouts getting hit immediately by far the worst is Okra, it could be cool temps we had for a week, but it got hot and the first hot day they looked much worse then the day before.

I do not think water is an issue. I am going to take my soil in to get tested.

More pics from this morning

beet eaten by slugs?

Edge of corn shredded, seen this a few times

Sad edamame, they do good if they survive the first couple days

More pics

Above and below are potato leaves, this is new

Squash above and below

New tiny bites?

I do think the sevin burnt out leaf edges

I have tested PH in the past and it was ok, close to neutral

Smart move to get your soil tested. For any serious gardener, that's the #1 thing to do, to get you off on the right foot. There are references here to well water. I doubt that's an issue, but at least if you drink it, the EPA strongly advises that well water get tested. For plants, excess iron can be a problem, mostly from deep wells. Compost doesn't really add a lot of nutrients unless you use a large load of it, but is important for soil structure.

Peppers are in the same place as the last couple years, not great but in the past they did great. I fertilized last november then in spring with alaska fish fertilizer. Some are better then others but most grew very little, better ones are growing peppers but not getting larger. Some 2 feet away are a LOT better then the same plant, all from seed indoors and all doing the same when transplanted.

I did find a couple earwigs today. Does DE work good against them? Not many other options. Slugs are silly, I have DE out and sluggo at the base of the plants the are eating. ggggrrr

Fish fertilizer is a mild nitrogen fertilizer. Not going to do much for P and K, which are more important for peppers. Pine needle mulch won't add much, nutrient wise, because they break down and compost very slowly. Yes, DE should slow down earwig damage. Earwigs don't fly that well, so applying DE in a soil ring around the plants should work.

Spread DE all around plants and on Dill and Asparagus last night. Here are peppers, some doing a lot better then others. Note black background, to hot? Worst ones are near it. Also new spots on sunflower leaf last night.

Hard to make it too hot for peppers. My peppers are in a bed street-side, next to lots of black asphalt, and the temp gets close to 120F with no trouble for the peppers. I should add that I'm always a little suspicious of drip systems (if that's what I'm seeing), in that if not done properly, you can be left with dry areas. You might want to dig down in a few places and make sure the soil is uniformly moist.

I can't tell if it's a drip system or just a soaker hose. I went all out on drippers this year and glad I did because we've had no rain in 5 weeks. I usually do tomatoes and peppers but now even the corn and potatoes have a drip system and will never go back to sprinklers.

I was a little short on drip tubing on the corn so the 4 plants in front aren't irrigated but I water them by hand. Those 4 plants are less than half the height as the irrigated corn but you wouldn't know the difference if there wasn't something to compare them to. The short ones are just as health with no signs of under watering, or so one would think. The short stocks will be knee high by the 4th of July and normal for my area, but look at the others at waist high now! I'm sold on irrigation.

Pepper plants nearly three weeks ago. Notice the yellowing of leaves running through some plants? I gave the plants just a teaspoon of calcium nitrate each to boost the available nitrogen in the root zone. Yellow cleared up in 3 days, and often a plant lets you know what it needs just by looking at it. For the record a teaspoon of Cal. nitrate is 15% nitrate and less than a gram of nitrogen but a quick temporary boost until the roots can grow and find the nitrogen it needs.

Same pepper plants today, hot peppers at at the back, No yellow and their as green as I want them so nitrogen additions will be minimal at the most unless the plants signal a need. FYI, everything had an inch of compost applied under the fabric.

Just a picture using drip tubing but the sorry looking beets on the left has no drippers and it shows. I hand water the beets until I think they're drowning and then dig down and find the water made it an inch into the dry soil, so they'll get get drippers soon. The water goes deep with the drippers and the time allowed depends on the size dripper. Onions in the middle uses 0.8 gal per hour and gets about 1 hour on every couple of days, and the water goes well below the root zone. The determinate Tomatoes use 2 gallons per hour drippers and get 15 to 20 minutes run time every day or two. Peppers are 1 gallon per hour drippers and get 30 minutes every day or two.

These indeterminate tomato plants drippers run one drip every 4 to 5 seconds, and I use two, one on either side so I don't get dry sides and they run 24/7. I use considerably less water now and the well pump isn't constantly running. I really do think the cost for irrigation materials will pay for themselves in the long run.

In my opinion fish juice is nearly worthless as a fertilizer with a 4-1-1 ratio, and blood meal is totally worthless with a 12-0-0 and only good for corn or onions but considering the cost I wouldn't use either one. Don, I see a magnesium deficiency in some of your plants and also see a potassium deficiency in others. One sure way of having crappy bitter peppers is shorting them on potassium, and the other nutrients you're not giving them. Green won't mean tasty so amend your veggies with an inch of compost or use the right fertilizers for the different plants you're growing. Your soybeans produce they're own nitrogen through nitrogen fixation just like any bean, so fish juice isn't even needed on them and may be why the edges look as they do from nitrogen burn. Peppers need more potassium than nitrogen when producing peppers so there isn't a one fertilizer that fits all needs here. A few will throw out a basic go to ratio for everything only because it was a simple easy thing to remember, but we're not growing flowers here either.

Potato tubers can grow nearly twice the size with more potassium than a soil test would recommend because it's a luxury fertilizer for potatoes and they can't get enough, unless you don't add it. You need to put some spare time into reading what each plant you're growing actually needs and then put what you've learned to practice. With the compost and a preplant application of a little balanced fertilizer many things don't need anything else. When you learn the basics then you can move into fertilization 1.2 and learn about pop up fertilizers at planting and stuffing the envelope.

Thanks! I do not use the drip hose. I use a sprinkler, or most times water by hand with a can not hitting leaves. Found small black crickets today, always have them - not a lot. Plants covered in DE got hit last night. Poor okra here never had a chance, came out early AM today

A few tiny flower sprouts are gone, eaten.

Thanks guys, I have NOT been using specific fertilizer for specific plants.

Are you claiming this seedling that is sickly and yellow was "hit" by insects?

What do you think my peppers need?

For some reason I started thinking of mice and men, odd.

I find rotted hay/straw to be the best mulch for veggies. It seems to add more humus to the soil, and doesn't seem to encourage disease like other mulches can.

And I agree about compost - veggies love it.

I still feel sure there is something fundamentally awry with the soil that is causing most of the problems. The symptoms (stunting, yellowing, distortion) largely look like cultural/nutritional issues, not pests. Adding compost would be a good place to start.

floral keep in mind that the peppers that are doing poorly are where peppers did really really good the past couple years and it is literally in the middle of my garden. Also all other veggies are doing good. Update, my tomatoes and potatoes are growing like crazy. I got leaves "ripped" again, no chance it was hail. Cannot figure this out. Jagged holes in middle of leaf and edges, at various heights. It cannot be birds - hummingbird? I see hummingbirds ever day. I am still getting flower sprouts eaten GONE the first night. Edamame gets nailed by something at night, at times even before it emerges - just as it breaks through somehow things are getting inside the protective shell and nibbling to the point of killing them.

Many pepper plants are rough. Some look healthy and have a bunch of peppers that are growing but the plant is not growing at all. A few are doing ok but most are just growing peppers not the plant. Edamame is not doing good, found aphids now and hit with DE last night.

Everything else is great, beans, tom's, cuc's, potatoes, corn, sunflowers, peas, lettuce, beets, leaks, asparagus, zuc's & squash. Edamame that last 3 days then does fine.

So sad peppers, rough okra and new sprouts getting ravaged. I set mouse traps out all over and have not caught one. Not a rabbit, I know what they eat - never tiny sprouts.

Above appeared over night on sunflower leaf

Leaf hole s above

Garden around peppers doing good

pepper leaf

Potato leaf dots on both sides of leaf

Be aware that compost is a weak, and very slow fertilizer. If your soil has a serious nutrient deficiency, and you want to fix it NOW, compost isn't the solution. A soil test will tell you a lot, and most will come with strategies for remediation.

The fact that you've had good success in this bed in previous years makes nutrient deficiency a little less credible. But death of sprouts could be a surface issue, and nutrient leaching will be most effective up top.

The reason that people recommend the "weak" compost is that the soil looks mediocre to terrible, and results apparently keep getting worse over the years which implies something wrong with the gardening practices. If what you are doing is not getting results, you try something different.

Improve the soil for gardening, stop trying to kill all insects outdoors, stop trying to kill all weeds, don't overuse fertilizers and poisons. Many plants look very stressed... yellow leaves, wrinkled leaves, brown edges, they stop growing normally.

The pepper plants might have some diseases from being grown in the same spot, try planting different types of plants in different spots, it is hard to eliminate all types of diseases and pests when you garden every year. There is nothing terribly wrong with the potato and sunflower leaves above that you should worry about.

Yes, weak compost will improve soil structure immediately, but will not remediate nutrient deficiencies, at least in the short term. Terrible looking soil is not an indicator for nutrient deficiencies.

Death of sprouts is them getting eaten at night. There at dusk gone at dawn. Some other pepper plants that looked bad when transplanted aare acutally looking great now and growing. About 1/3 of peppers are doing bad, 1/3 ok, 1/3 good (maye a little slow growing). I am not leaning towards mssing nutrients. But it could be over fertilizing too, Tough, soil tests need mailed in and take weeks, I am really trying to figure it out asap to get the going.

It could be disease from growing in the same spot. In the past I sometimes I have a pepper plant pretty much die quickly for no obvious reason, had to be a root issue.

Not is is roots, they look really sad (wilted) when it is hot, when sun goes down and I water they perk up.

I tested 4 rough ones, dissolved lime in water and put on 2 and used generic miracle gro on other 2 (because it had other stuff that previous fertilizer I used did not) it has been 2 days so far.

Might be nematodes - or fusarium...

What are these tiny dots? I have them on pepper and potato leaves.

That last photo looks like some insect damage on the leaf - is that what you're referring to?

Yes it is definitely inset, finding it on lots of different plants

Maybe flea beetles?

The damage on the pepper and potato leaves looks like it is from a four-lined plant bug.

Rodney

beesneeds - Unfortunately, it didn't take.

What is this? I know it looks like a striped cucumber beetle but I don't think it is. It really doesn't have any yellow it's more of a light green.

Also after 4 days it appears the 2 pepper plants that I put generic Miracle Grow on are looking better.

The beetle has been on sunflowers, peppers and potatoes. None on cucumbers or squash.

Cindy 7 VA- indeed, appears not.

That's not a beetle - it's a Four-lined plant bug, a common garden pest that feeds on a huge variety of things. In most cases, it just causes cosmetic damage and doesn't really "harm" anything:

https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-insects/four-lined-plant-bugs

So I take it you didn't look up what four-lined plant bugs looked like or the damage they do when I suggested them yesterday...

Sorry busy day! THANKS! I did not think it was a cuc beetle but never heard of that pest. It did strike me as odd that is missed common cucumber beetle targets. Yes that is what it is. I agree it does very little damage especially for it's size, other beetles that size are far far far worse.

Peppers I hit with miracle grow are improving. Okra is looking a lot better, I hit it with DE a few times and a fungicide. I think it is bouncing back quickly.