The Modern Victory Garden

Realized this morning that the green beans have developed a serious rusty-looking appearance with leaf loss and deformed beans now. My research leads to conclusion that its bacterial canker disease. My balcony neighbor has had a sick plant just to the left of my green beans. Now see signs of stress in my marigolds in my adjoining planter. Have commenced triage on these plants. I'm hoping to see yellow peppers (next planter). July has brought storms with hurricane force winds and the pepper lost its top early in July. It fought back to produce two fist-sized peppers, so there's hope. Unless the canker has found its way west. Next to pepper is a lush cherry tomato plant. It has branches that are yellowing and withering. This is a high-rise with adjoining balconies. So our plants share pests and diseases. The solution is fresh soil and clean pots each growing season. Many balcony gardeners don't understand why that's important. Disease is why it's important.

So true MarC!    Soil health is even more critical when container growing - everything is confined to that small universe of space so problems are corralled and amplified.   Sorry to hear about the cankers and rusts.    Common occurence even in field grown plantings.    It sounds like you do a good job of growing a wide vareity of items in the space you have available!