I have silver/white trails on my green bean plants leaves. What type of bug/disease cause this? -jax, fl?

Question

I have silver/white trails on my green bean plants leaves. What type of bug/disease cause this? -jax, fl?

Answer 1

You have a snail/slug problem.

Leafminer larvae squirm around between the skin of the leaves in an erratic manner, chewing up the fine membrane in the leaf.  The outer layer then turns a greyish-brown.  I just remove the infected leaves; sometimes removing the dead/dying leaves rejuvenates the plant to grow taller or regrow new leaves.

Snails/slugs leave a silvery crust behind that you can see best early in the morning, after those slimy beasties have fed and gone back to their hidey-holes in the soil.  They like moist, shaded areas and chew on soft plant tissue.  A few can be hand-picked but an infestation requires more drastic measures, like a shallow bowl placed flush with the soil.  

Fill that bowl with beer (Bud Lite!).  The slugs will be attracted to the sugary contents of the beer, crawl inside the bowl and drown.  I can't think of a more miserable way to drown than in a bowl of Bud Lite.  Bud Lite also works great in my fly trap.  So many flies are there every day, drowned in the stale beer.

PS--Be careful using slugbait in your garden.  Dogs have died eating that stuff, and it's a very painful way for them to go.

Answer 2

SOME kind of leaf miner.

The adult looks like a tiny fly/bee mix(usually) and it lays its eggs in between the plant tissues.When the larva hatches the tiny worm eats its way through the leaf leaving that silver trail.

Then it cocoons and hatches out, bursting one end of that trail leaving a brown edged hole in the leaf.

Answer 3

snails

Answer 4

If it looks like some of the 'trail' photos in this search, youve got either a snail, or slug -

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/im...

I know slugs eat algae, fungus, dead leaves, etc.. and a few eat carrion, so most species are not a problem when it comes to gardens....but there are a few that will eat parts of living plants.  So, you need to identify which type of slug, or snail, you've got.

Here is an article that you may find helpful -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug

By the way... most of the slug/snail body is made up of water....if you want to keep it out of a certain area, you can lay down a line of salt.  I've done this to keep them from coming in entry doors.  The salt causes them to dry out, and they avoid it.  Naturally, you don't want to salt your garden.... so you might try laying down a line of salt on a small strip of plastic.  That article I linked also has a list of predators that will go after the slug.

Good Luck