Check these first
- What shape is the damage: round holes, only veins left, white trails, or a pale stippling?
- Where are the insects or droppings: under the leaves, on new shoots, or at the base?
- If nothing is visible by day, check at night or early morning for cutworms and slugs.
Most likely causes
From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.
Twenty-eight-spotted Ladybird
The leaf surface is shaved thin, leaving a fine net-like pattern of feeding scars. Heavy feeding browns and kills the leaves and scars the fruit surface as well.
How to identify and treat: Twenty-eight-spotted LadybirdRoot-lesion Nematode
Elongated blackish brown necrotic lesions form on the root surface and fine roots rot away. Above ground the stand is uneven and plants stay small with pale foliage.
How to identify and treat: Root-lesion NematodeRoot-knot Nematode
The plant wilts in the daytime and does not recover with feeding or watering. Pull it up and the roots carry beaded chains of galls of varying size with few fine roots.
General description; not specific to this plant.
How to identify and treat: Root-knot NematodeOther possible causes
The three above are the causes on record for this symptom.
Other symptoms on this plant
What other growers did about it
A page like this one can tell you what potato pests and bug damage is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.
Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.
- Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
- Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
- Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.
Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.