broad beans... leaves and shoots curling

[MarkP]

Help!

Can anyone tell me what is happening to my broad beans? I have been growing Imperial Green Windsor for about 15 years (on a three-year rotation) without any problem apart from blackfly, but this year, after a normal start, about 30% of them have suddenly started to curl up their leaves and shoots. I cannot see any infestation or anything obvious and I can't find anything in the normal books.

help please.

Mark
PS .. I have a good image but I cannot see how to insert it.

[Geoff]

No idea about curly beans, mind you I'm curling up a bit in this weather, people putting on coats in the office!
There is some advice about using pictures in Website Help section. Basically you have to resize the picture to 640 pixels wide and then host it somewhere, a lot of us use photobucket.com. I think you can resize it there as well. When you have got it onto photobucket you well see three entries under the picture, one of them will have the before and after. Just highlight all that entry and do Ctrl C then when you have written your post do Ctrl V and it will paste in the link. Preview will upload it to KG and show it is working.

[MarkP]

[IMG]http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i193/MarkP_2006/broadbeansIMG_0160reducedto640.jpg[/IMG]

[Geoff]

Well it should have worked - over to Mr PH - please let us know what was wrong.

[MarkP]

failed image

[Clive.]

[MarkP]

Thanks Clive, that shows it in all its glory! That, believe it or not, was a healthy broad bean plant.

Mark

PS I am using Firefox, is that a problem? Even in Internet Explorer mode.

[Clive.]

Hello Mark,

I have just switched over to Firefox to check and it worked ok the same as Internet Explorer...I only went as far as the preview page and didn't submit the reply but it was working ok in Firefox.

I clicked on the Img button then added your photobucket link then clicked the Img to finish and hey presto it worked.

Photobucket in fact offers the whole link which can be highlighted and then copied and pasted straight into TKG forum reply pane without the need to click the Img button at all.

Poor old Broad Beans look very sad....could it be a lawn weedkiller mishap..??

All the best,
Clive.

[MarkP]

No not lawn weedkiller, it is well away from any lawn, except a wildflower meadow and everything around is healthy.

Cracked it.. I had BBCode disabled, works fine in preview when I enable it!

Thanks

Mark

[Clive.]

I had BBCode disabled

I see.. so that's why it wouldn't accept Broad Beans then..

[richard p]

broad beans are very suceptable to weedkillers, they can be affected by windborn spray drift from neighbours even when adjacent crops show no damage.

[MarkP]

Thanks Richard
I agree, it does look like weedkiller damage, but I think it is most unlikely, it would have had to travel at least 30 yards, through a hedge, through a bed of beans that have been minimally affected and just picked out some of the plants in the beds that have been affected, leaving the ones all around unaffected.

I would be very relieved if it is that, my worry was that it might be either a stem borer or a virus.

Mark

[Johnboy]

Hi Mark,
It looks very like an attack from one of the Gaul Wasps as the plants are actually mutated. This is pure surmise on my behalf and do not know if there is a Gaul Wasp that actually will do that to Broad Beans. I have never seen anything like it hereabouts.I feel sure that Spray drift is not going to be found guilty as some would like it to be.
My personal thoughts are that the plants would be better culled.

[MarkP]

I have followed that one up on the Internet, certainly it can occur in beans.. but no galls visible

Another Photo, the last one was one of the plants that was curling over.. this is more typical. I still dont like weedkiller, it can occur in a single plant in the middle of a group of normal ones.

In desperation I sprayed with Tumblebug a few nights ago and there seems to be some uncurling in the new shoots???



Mark

[Compo]

Some irresponsible person on our plot, mixed up weedkiller over the water butt I was sure that I saw some leak into the butt, so i poured some of it onto the allotment vehicle track. the grass died back badly. I usually dunk my can in the butt and leave the tap running, will watch what i do with that again. Just shows how chemicals can get into the ground without you knowing......

compo