Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
acorn922

Pumpkin leaves shrivling.

acorn922
12 years ago

The leaves on a couple of vines of one pumpkin plant have started to shrivel up so now they're skinny and pointy, not round like they should be. They're still green.

Is it due to too much water? We've been getting a lot of rain recently.

Can it be reversed?

Comments (8)

  • terrybull
    12 years ago

    i wouldnt worry about it. its most likely your weather, hot and humid. just keep an eye on it.

  • missingtheobvious
    12 years ago

    weirdtrev, I have three cantaloupe plants which have occasional leaves near the growing tip which are not skinny but rather, scrunched up. I assume this is the mosaic virus as well?

    When you say "subsequent fruits," do you mean any fruits which are set farther along that particular branch, or all fruits which develop on that plant after the time when the plant was infected?

    Are the deformed fruit palatable and safe to eat? (So far I have not seen any that look deformed.)

    If the early fruit are okay, can I assume the seeds from those fruit will be free of the virus?

    These are Super 45 (from Bonnie Plants), a variety which is supposed to be resistant to mildew -- and it certainly seems to be! I'm not a fan of hybrids, but I love not needing to spray these when I do the cukes and pumpkins.

  • missingtheobvious
    12 years ago

    Thank you for your answer. I guess I'm lucky, because I've never seen anything that looks like CMV.

    The CMV photos at your link are not at all what my cantaloupe leaves look like. Imagine crumpling a piece of paper into a ball (not real tight). The leaves never open properly, and they're definitely crumpled as opposed to neatly folded. But they're otherwise normal, and don't turn brown or wilt. I see only one bad leaf here and there.

  • terrybull
    12 years ago

    mto, or does it look like this?

  • missingtheobvious
    12 years ago

    Thank you both. The leaf shape is more like terrybull's photo, but much more unevenly folded and bunched rather than simply downcurving.

    After reading more of wierdtrev's article, I can see that the "downward bending of the ... leaf surface along with leaf reduction" described in CMV of summer squash is obviously related to my problem. The leaves are crumpled -- and parts of them may be folded upward -- but the edges are always down.

    What seems odd is that after one bad leaf appears on a branch, many of the subsequent leaves on that same branch will be normal.

    And I just found two clusters of squash bug eggs on the (probably not going to ripen before frost anyway) pumpkins. Never saw those before either.

    Well, at least the tomatoes haven't had any Late Blight this year.

Sponsored
Dream Baths by Kitchen Kraft
Average rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars12 Reviews
Your Custom Bath Designers & Remodelers in Columbus I 10X Best Houzz