Garden Pests and Diseases: bugs or disease on leaf brocolli?, 0 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
I had a leaf brocolli over-winter and go to seed, but lately I have seen just a few clusters of some gray infestation. They clumps are mostly on the outermost tips, but sometimes ikn a "crotch" or node.

The clumps are quite dense and clumpy as if fairly big gray and gray-white bugs all climbed up the branch to the highest spot until they were shoulder-to-shoulder. Or it looks a little like a clump of bumpy bird dung.

They are easy to brush off with a twig, and what's left behind looks wet, perhaps with sucked-out plant juice.

I cut the tips off and throw them into a sealed rubbish can. Only a tiny amount of the plant iks affected, but I want it to stay healthy until I can harvest thehuge amount of seed it promises.

The big plants are now almost entirely pods and stems and branches: just a few small leaves are left lower down.


The plant is Brassica oleracea var. 'Spigariello' . ("Spigariello Liscia" or "Broccolo Spigariello"). It was supposed to be an annual, but I saw NO pods all last summer or winter. It looked happy all winter (supposed to be hardy down to 25 F). This spring it started growing again, then threw out a million pods.