Pests & diseases › Bacterial Wilt
Bacterial Wilt
Bacterial disease (Erwinia tracheiphila) transmitted by cucumber beetles. Cucurbit plants wilt and die rapidly.
Symptoms
- Sudden wilting of one vine or entire plant
- Wilting that doesn't recover overnight
- Cut stem oozes sticky white sap — string test confirms it
- Whole plant dies within days
Lifecycle
Spread exclusively by striped and spotted cucumber beetles. No cucumber beetles = no bacterial wilt.
What to do
- Pull and bag affected plants immediately
- No cure — disease is systemic
If it's bad
- Target the cucumber beetle vector, not the disease itself
Stop it coming back
- Floating row covers from planting until flowering (must remove for pollination)
- Resistant varieties: Saladin and County Fair cucumber
- Aggressive cucumber beetle control
- Trap crops (Hubbard squash) to lure beetles away
Crops it goes for
Plan the plot, track every sowing, cook the harvest
Sowing reminders and harvest forecasts for your own frost dates, the Seed Tin, Scan Centre for any label or packet, and the Potty Mouth Garden Club. Free to start.