I grow vegetables in a 40' x 40' plot in an organic community garden that's been pesticide-free since 1978. That sounds quaint. It's not.
What it actually means is forty years of disease buildup, no pest control, and super-sad soil. Gardening here has made me a better gardener the same way being lost at sea makes you a better swimmer.
I've dealt with corn smut, vine borers, and so many plants that just disappeared overnight. So when something weird happens in the garden, as it always does, I don’t panic. Just kidding. Of course I panic.
After I get the panic out of the way then I pause. I observe. And then I ask the most important gardening question of all:
“Is this normal?”
This post answers that. THEN it answers is it harmful.
1. White Powder On Leaves
What it looks like: Leaves coated with a fine, dusty white or grey layer.
What it is: Powdery mildew.
Is it harmful? Yes, if ignored. It spreads easily, weakens plants, and reduces yield.
Prevention: Space your plants, prune for airflow, water early in the day.
While it's happening: Remove infected leaves and apply a milk or vinegar spray.
After it clears: Cut off newly affected leaves and keep them watered. Surprising Fact: Drought/dry conditions are what actually cause powdery mildew.
2. My Tomato Leaves Are Curling Like Party Streamers
A VERY common issue with tomatoes leaves is curling. People panic over their tomatoes. Calm down right now. Leaf curl is normal and not usually a sign of a imminent death.
What it looks like: Leaves curling inward or upward, sometimes puckered.
What it is: Stress. Overpruning, heatwaves, or inconsistent watering.
Is it harmful? Usually not. Keep an eye on new leaves (post stress leaves) to see how they unfurl. If new growth is affected THEN it's time to investigate further.
Prevention: Never prune more than ⅓rd of a plant away at a time. If you need to reduce it's size by more than that, do it over the course of a week instead of all at once. Water evenly. Mulch helps.
While it's happening: Stop pruning. Keep watering consistent. No fertilizer.
After it clears: Continue on with life as normal.
3. Lettuce That’s Suddenly Tall & Skinny
The first time this happened to me I was confused. I also had a really bad salad that night. Lettuce gets a tall skinny central stalk from heat or age.
What it looks like: Lettuce going vertical and flowering. Big gaps between leaf nodes so the lettuce looks like an evergreen tree instead of a nice low shrub.
What it is: Bolting.
Is it harmful? Only to your taste buds. The leaves turn bitter and tough once it has bolted. Once it bolts, the lettuce is not edible for humans but great for chickens.
Prevention: Use bolt-resistant varieties or when you know it's going to get hot you can cover your crop with a shade cover to keep it cooler to help prevent bolting. Use a shade cover with 30% shading and your lettuce will last longer before bolting.
After it bolts: Compost, feed it to livestock or let it grow, flower and then harvest the lettuce seed.
4. Carrots With Legs & Arms
What it looks like: Forked or twisted roots. Like carrot sex.
What it is: Caused by rocks, compaction, crowding or transplanting.
Is it harmful? No—just ugly and makes the carrots hard to peel.
Prevention: Loosen soil deeply. Thin seedlings. Make sure roots are straight and pointing down if transplanting.
After harvest: Fork your soil before next season. Don't turn the soil over, just insert a pitchfork or shovel deep into the soil and push the soil up a little. Then slide the shovel or fork out.
5. I Didn't Plant That
What it looks like: A random squash, tomato, or sunflower appearing.
What it is: A volunteer plant.
Is it harmful? Not inherently but (if you're like me you'll allow them to grow) they interfere with the actual crop you're growing in that space.
Prevention: Make sure you dig up every single potato, fallen tomato, or rotting squash from your garden. (or don't - I certainly don't)
While it's happening: If it's growing somewhere you are growing something else and it's going to interfere - get brave and pull the volunteer plant out. You can also try transplanting it to a better location.
6. Zucchini Form Then Fall Off
This is a big one too. I get a lot of questions about this. Tiny zucchinis start to form and you get excited, then they turn yellow and drop off to an early death.
What it looks like: Fruit starts growing, you squeal, then it yellows, shrivels and drops. You swear.
What it is: Probably poor pollination. It can also be the inability for the plant to take up nutrients but that reason is a rare case, not the norm.
Is it harmful? Yes, without pollination you don't get food. It also takes a lot of the plant's energy to form little fruit only to have them die off.
Prevention: Attract more pollinators with bee friendly flowers around the garden.
While it's happening: It's an easy fix - you can hand pollinate the zucchini with a male flower.
After the fix: Keep attracting pollinators. Flies are also fantastic pollinators.
7. Dahlia Leaves Look Like Swiss Cheese
What it looks like: Holes in the leaves, often overnight. Perhaps even just the skeletal remains.
What it is: Slugs, or earwigs.
Is it harmful? Yes. Slugs and earwings will not only weaken the plant in one feast, they can obliterate it completely. And they do it FAST. In 1-2 nights they can completely eat a young dahlia seedling.
Prevention: Keep foliage and ground dry so it's less attractive to damp loving slugs and earwigs. Avoid dense mulch - they hide in it. Avoid lots of garden debris near the plants, that's where they like to live while they aren't eating your prized dahlias.
While it’s happening: Use homemade slug drowning traps. Americans can use Sluggo Plus which is organic and eliminates earwigs and slugs, and earwig traps.
After control: Keep monitoring during humid spells. That's when slugs and earwigs are at their most obnoxious.
8. Skunks, Raccoons, Rabbits
What it looks like: Uprooted plants, foliage all eaten, tomatoes with ONE bite taken out of them scattered on the ground.
What it is: Raccoons, skunks, or squirrels.
Is it harmful? Yes. I mean, clearly, yes.
Prevention: The most reliable prevention is a mini electric fence for anything with fur and feet.
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9. Your Compost Isn't Composting
What it looks like: Not like dirt.
What it is: A stalled compost pile—usually due to lack of nitrogen (green stuff), oxygen, moisture, or heat.
Is it harmful? Not exactly, but it wastes time and space.
What causes it: Too many browns (like dried leaves, cardboard, straw), not enough greens (like kitchen scraps, grass clippings), no moisture, or insufficient aeration. It also won’t heat up if your pile is too small.
Prevention: Aim for a 50/50 mix of greens and browns, create a pile that's at least 3' x 3' x 3' so it can retain heat, and water the pile if it's dry.
While it's happening: Stir it up with a pitchfork. Add a few buckets of fresh greens or if you're hardcore diluted urine (yes, really) to jumpstart nitrogen. Mix in a handful of garden soil for microbial activity. Water it if it’s dry.
After it recovers: Let it sit, turn it whenever you feel like it and at some point you *will* have compost. You can do it faster (within a month) if you hot compost.
10. Zucchini Rotting at the Tip
What it looks like: The blossom end turns black and soft.
What it is: Blossom end rot. Despite the dramatic look, it’s not a disease—it’s a physiological disorder caused by a calcium imbalance in the fruit. The calcium is often present in the soil, but the plant can’t access it due to inconsistent watering, root damage, or sudden growth spurts.
Is it harmful? Yes.
Prevention: Keep watering evenly. No fertilizers.
While it’s happening: Remove damaged fruit.
After control: Mulch and maintain watering habits.
🔍 How to Tell the Difference: Blossom End Rot vs. Poor Pollination
- Blossom end rot:
Happens on larger fruit (3–6") that’s already pollinated
→ Look for a dark, sunken spot at the blossom end - Poor pollination:
Affects tiny fruit (1–3") that wasn’t properly fertilized
→ Fruit yellows, shrivels, and drops off early
11. Unidentified Bugs: Squish or Spare?
This is where the Internet - known liar - is your best friend.
What it looks like: A bug you don’t recognize.
What it is: Could be a helper—or a horror.
Is it harmful? Depends. Many bugs are beneficial.
While it’s happening: Take a photo of the bug, image search it in Google images to ID it. THIS is one of the greatest advances of the Internet and AI. You can just take a photo of the bug and instantly have an answer.
After control: Learn who your garden allies are. Not every bug should be obliterated no matter how creepy.
To search an image on Google from your phone:
Open your Photos app
Tap to select the photo you want to search
Scroll down and tap “Search on Google”
Tap “Search with Google Lens”
Type in any helpful keywords to narrow the results (e.g. “rose bud”)
Tap Search and review your results.
Click PLAY to watch step by step how to image search this way.
12. Blight on Tomatoes
I've never grown tomatoes without also growing blight. I manage it but can't eliminate it. It's just part of gardening where I garden.
What it looks like: Brown or black spots on lower leaves, yellowing, and eventual leaf drop. In severe cases the stems, all the leaves and the tomatoes will develop lesions or rot. Most blight cases end up being severe.
What it is: A fungal or bacterial disease—usually early blight, septoria leaf spot, or late blight. It spreads quickly in humid or wet conditions and can destroy plants.
Is it harmful? Yes. Blight reduces plant vigor, prevents fruit from ripening, and in the case of late blight, can kill plants entirely. It also spreads easily from plant to plant.
What causes it: Warm, wet weather; overhead watering; poor air circulation; infected soil or transplants.
Prevention:
- Use disease-resistant varieties
- Space plants properly and prune for airflow
- Prune your tomatoes
- Water at the base—never overhead
- Mulch to prevent soil splash
- Rotate crops every season and don’t compost infected plants
While it's happening:
- Remove infected leaves as soon as you spot them
- Dispose of infected material off-site—do not compost
- Apply an organic fungicide like copper or sulfur-based sprays as a last resort
After control:
- Clean up all debris at the end of the season
- Sanitize tools between plants
- Rotate crops and plant non-nightshades (not tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, or eggplant) in that bed next year
String training tomatoes (instead of caging them) helps because the plants have more air around them and less leaves.
13. My Cucumber Plants Are Suddenly Wilted
What it looks like: Healthy cucumber vines that flop over seemingly overnight, often while still green.
What it is: Likely cucumber beetles spreading bacterial wilt. These bugs carry a bacteria in their gut that clogs the plant’s vascular system.
Is it harmful? Yes. Once infected, there's no cure for bacterial wilt. The plant won’t recover.
Prevention: I've tried everything from row covers to hand picking to disease resistant varieties. Nothing really works unfortuantely.
While it’s happening: Remove and dispose of infected plants immediately to reduce beetle populations and bacterial spread.
After control: Sanitize garden tools, rotate crops, and control beetles early next season by spraying plants with neem oil and using yellow sticky traps.
PRO TIP: One method of control isn’t enough. Always use at least three—especially for pests and disease.
- 1 method = maybe works
- 2 methods = usually helps
- 3 methods = actually solves the problem
Layer and stack your attack for success.
14. My Squash Plant Collapsed in the Heat of the Day
What it looks like: A squash vine that was fine yesterday and is now a wilty pile of leaves, even if the soil is moist.
What it is: Squash vine borer larvae—moth caterpillars that burrow into the stems at soil level and hollow them out like garden pipe bombs.
Is it harmful? Yes. A vine borer decimates the stem until it can't take up any water, the plant wilts and dies.
Prevention: Use row covers until flowering. Wrap lower stems in foil to stop vine borers from boring.
While it’s happening: Slice open the stem carefully with a sharp knife and remove the larva inside. Bury the wounded part of the stem under soil to encourage re-rooting.
After control: Monitor nearby plant stems regularly.
🪴 Final Thoughts
Weird is inevitable in gardening. Some things are harmless. Some need a fix. The important thing is knowing the difference—and not yanking your tomato out because it had a bad week.
Your next move:
Leave a comment with the weirdest thing happening in your garden right now. I’ve probably seen it. The longer you garden the more you realize just how much weird stuff you can ignore. I used to obsess over every misshapen leaf or spot. Now I ignore a lot.
Mine isn’t a perfect garden. It’s a 40' x 40' experiment in survival.
Weird is part of the process. Remember—if something in your garden looks weird, alarming, or not quaint … there’s a decent chance it’s just trying to grow.
Karen but not that karen
Please help! My malva that i grew from seed and that is blooming profusely, has what i think is Rust attacking its leaves. I am picking the leaves off, but I don’t want to pick them all off and kill the plant….i googled and the results were either baking soda spray, or some weird chemical that i am sure is not legal….should i try the milk spray like the one that you use for downy mildew?..
Addie
Two years ago I got a crazy attack of squash bugs all over my squash/zucchini area. It had never happened before and it was at an insane level!!! I freaked.....cuz that always helps ;)
What I did.....I watered deeply and then applied a good dusting of DE, diatomaceous earth. A really good dusting. Next day they were all gone AND never to return. There were millions of them...no lie!!!! DE is totally human safe...in fact I drink it in water 2x a week.
Kristina
Every year, I have gophers literally pull my transplants down into the holes I just planted them in, bugs bunny style. I have even witnessed the suckers doing it, then throw up their little pile of soil behind them, just to taunt me. I live out in the country, so vertebrate pest control is a constant battle... I also lost all my chickens one night last week to predation, when I thought they were snug in their (I thought secure) chicken house. Still pissed off about it.
Karen
I went out one night and found raccoons literally climbing the hardware cloth on my coop. I don't know how you'd control gophers. I think I'd cry if I had to add them to the already long line of pests I deal with. ~ karen!
Carol B.
Here is the weirdest (and most disgusting) thing I have ever seen in my gardens. Last week, I found a single lily leaf beetle on my gian) Asiatic lily. I removed it and threw it into the garbage. These are beautiful bright red beetles, but I know from experience what kind of damage they can do. I made the mistake of not looking for eggs. A few days ago, I checked the lily again. There were irregular, thick brown blobs scattered over many of the leaves, and some looked like there were small orange slugs underneath the brown blobs. I looked up the life cycle of lily leaf beetles, and much to my horror, I learned that the larvae, which are slug-like, cover themselves with their own excrement to disguise themselves. My beautiful lily plant was covered with disgusting beetle slugs under thick layers of poop! I got a paper towel, soaked it in alcohol, and removed all the poopy larvae. I have never been so grossed out, even by earwigs.
Karen
That tracks. Bugs are generally horrifying and then ... they'l surprise you by being even more horrifying. ~ karen!
Stephanie K.
Welp, I just read that as blossom-end rot being a PSYCHOLOGICAL issue, and my first thought was "yep, that checks out". It wasn't until I got to the bit about the calcium that I went back to reread it.
Fussy emo squash.
Karen
LOL! ~ karen
Hettie
Thanks for all the tips, Karen. I've told you before - maybe I tell you every year - but you're the reason I started vegetable gardening. Your enthusiasm spurred me on years ago, and I've loved it ever since. When it comes to eating, nothing beats enjoying homegrown veggie goodness.
Thanks for a great blog! :)
Karen
Thanks Hettie! I love hearing that. ~ karen!
Leslye Queen
re. #11 Picture Insect is a great app for id-ing creepy crawlies eating your plants. Easier and faster (and probably more accurate) than Google Lens.*
Since you're a gardener, you might also like the Picture This app for plant identification and the Rock Identifier app. (People who are interested in bugs and plants are probably also interested in rocks.) I've been using the free versions of all three for years.
Thanks for writing about things I'm interested in. ;-)
*Lens told me that a picture of Stevie Nicks from the 1980s was Madonna in the mid-90s.
Karen
Same same. 🤣 Yes, you always have to be very clear and double check Google results. With everything, not just plants. The rock identifier sounds fun! ~ karen
Judy Jackson
Most marvelous 'article' I've ever seen on "WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY PLANT". Good job Girl.
My weird quandary of the day is something that looks like a trail of large areas of liquid brown diarrhea dropped/spewed by a large animal while moving???? I've noooooo clue.
Thanks,
Judy Jackson
Karen
I've no clue either. If it happens repeatedly I'd be buying a trail cam and setting it up to find out! ~ karen!
Charlene Burnside
Wish Health Canada would hurry the BLEEP up and approve Sluggo Plus. It's been under review here for years for home gardeners. Spinosad (the magic) is available commercially here just not for us
Karen
I know. It seems wrong. And frustrating. ~ karen!
Agnes
Asparagus beetles - anyone know a better strategy than daily picking and drowning?
Karen
I don't have a problem with them so I'm not sure, but maybe spraying the bed with something to kill the overwintering beetles and eggs in the fall would help the problem the following spring. ~ karen!
Norma
Get yourself a couple of hens to patrol them, or invest in a cordless vacuum!
Mary W
I've gardened for many years but learned new things in your post. Thanks for all the work it took and especially the bug ID tips. We have many, many bugs. I overhead watered for the first time ever (after hand watering for years) and it is EASY and so satisfying to flip the switch and walk away. I didn't remember why I wouldn't overhead water but my SIL installed it for me and I've been so happy. Now for the sad part - you reminded me of why I didn't overhead water. We finally got rain and the clean rows one week ago are filled with 4' weeds so that I looked at my garden in disgust wondering why I liked to plant. At 80, weeding is hard - I didn't mulch yet so I'm to blame. How do I manage the horrific heat blistering sun that dries my soil in minutes but doesn't stop the midnight raiders from growing and sucking life from my plants. FLORIDA is a free daily sauna outside. I'm sorry to be miserable about gardening but I need cheering up. You are always my source in the morning. How do I mulch and not get billions of bugs?
Karen
Hi Mary W! I guess you have to pick your poison. Bugs aren't inherently bad. In fact they're good for soil. You can mulch with anything temporarily, like cardboard boxes or carpet remnants, door mats. Anything that can be thrown down until the plants in the bed get big enough to suppress the weeds themselves. Although without seeing the area it's hard to say. You’re still out there gardening at 80—that’s incredible. The weeds don’t stand a chance once you’ve had your coffee, so I'm not too worried about you. 😉 ~ karen!
Mary W
Your reply made me smile - that was great cheering up! Thank you.
Carol B.
Every year my garden (a 4x12 ft raised bed) is plagued by powdery mildew and Septoria leaf spot. I griw only tomatoes (unbelievably large, sweet, and juicy plum tomatoes that my friend's grandfather brought from Italy in the early 1900's), pickling cucumbers, and banana peppers (because cubanelle peppers won't grow). I cant rotate them, becsusr i font have snother bed to rotate them into.
I stopped growing zucchini because of squash vine borer. I fed the grubs to my neighbor's box turtles.
I have 2 questions:
Do you have to use a soaker hose as an earwig trap? I would have to buy one and cut it up. Seems wasteful.
Why should you just fork soil, instead of turning it over? I have heard that before, but I don't know why. Mixing it up seems to be the only way to get compost in. Thank you!
Karen
Hi Carol. 1.) I had a soaker hose I wasn't using and cut it up for the traps. If you - or anyone you know - has an old regular hose you could try cutting that into sections. My guess is it would probably work as well. 2.) Forking the soil lifts it, adding air and reducing compaction if you have any. Soil is like lasagna, with various layers of good things like microbes, earthworms, and different types of soils. It's all in a layer for a reason and it occurs naturally. Roots aren’t waiting for compost like it’s takeout. They wait for soil life to process compost and bring nutrients to them—kind of like room service. When you leave compost on top, worms and microorganisms naturally pull it down, no shovel required.
~ karen!
Carol B.
Thank you so much! I wish I had known that before I had someone thoroughly mix up the soil. It probably uncovered all the Septoria spores too. :-(
Next year will be different!
I'll definitely try the earwig thing with an old vinyl hose! I respect all living creatures in general, but earwigs fall into the same category as Donald Trump for me.
Jody
That's a great explanation of why to only fork soil and not turn it over. Take-out versus room service.