Topic: Sprouts

[russweth]

Unfortunatly I've Recently Had To Pull Up My Sprouts, As The Base Of THe Plants Had Developed A Black Sooty Substance And  Also The Leaves Seemed To Dry Up -  Discolour And Drop Off, Even The Sprouts Seemed To Be Mishaped, Could Whitefly Be The Culprit, As Clouds Of Them Take Off Into The Air When I Disturbe The Plants ?

[STEVEPARTRIDGE]

Hello Russweth, unfortunately you are correct it is Whitefly that have caused all of the symptoms that you have described, it has been a very bad year in some parts of the country for Whitefly damage probably due to the weather conditions, the black sooty deposit on your plants was the Whitefly's waste and the leaves would have had all the sap sucked out of them by the Whitefly causing them to drop off as you described, I have found spraying with an Organic Insecticidal Soap regularly has drastically reduced their numbers and helped to keep my crop healthy, the product is called Savona and is available from The Organic Gardening Catalogue whose web link is:
http://www.organiccatalog.com/catalog

 I hope that you find this information useful, you may need to consider using yellow sticky traps or covering with enviromesh in future to reduce their effect, regards Steve.

my website is  http://www.myallotments.blogspot.com