White spots on bean and lettuce leaves.

[Matthew Brisbois]

I live in zone 9b. Central florida. This is my first year gardening. I put a lot of work into everything. My dark red kidney bean leaves have all these tiny white specks. And my romaine lettuce as well. I have a video attached. Need some help diagnosing what it is. Also my potato leaves. Organic russet. A newer leave has all these brown dots.

 

[Chuck]

I live in zone 9b. Central florida. This is my first year gardening. I put a lot of work into everything. My dark red kidney bean leaves have all these tiny white specks. And my romaine lettuce as well. I have a video attached. Need some help diagnosing what it is. Also my potato leaves. Organic russet. A newer leave has all these brown dots.

You have two things happening. On the beans you have a fungus called rust. The white spots are the color at the beginning of the infection. Spray both sides of the leaves and the stem with Neem Oil or a copper based fungicide. On the lettuce you have leaf miners and there is nothing you can do for them as they are inside the leaf and I know of no safe systemic for them. All you can do is to spray with neem to kill any eggs that may have been laid on the unaffected leaves.

It looks as if some of your bean plants rust has turned from white to brown. Pull up the ones with brown as they will keep infecting the others and spray won't do much to them. If you caught this infection soon enough you will have a harvest but rust fungus is a big destroyer of all types of beans. It all depends on how long the rust has been there.

 

[Chuck]

Funny thing happened. I went out and checked my beans yesterday and guess what? Covered up in white spots. But I am sure I caught it in time to still get a good harvest. In fact I will be picking the first batch today.