Spinach Pests and Bug Damage: Causes & How to Fix It

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.

Other possible causes

• Root-knot Nematode — The plant wilts in the daytime and does not recover with feeding or watering. Pull it up a…
• Root-lesion Nematode — Elongated blackish brown necrotic lesions form on the root surface and fine roots rot away…

Other symptoms on this plant

What other growers did about it

A page like this one can tell you what spinach 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.

Written byYasuGrowing vegetables and fruit in Chiba, Japan, and building Gadenin. Corrections are welcome. 15 years of growing.