Monday, May 3, 2010

FIRE In The Garden?



It's so much nicer to post pictures of beautiful flowers like this Trillium. Much of the time if we treat our plants well, give them the soil, water, and planting conditions they like, everything is , well, rosy. I try to do this, and would be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about plant disease. Like the ostrich with his head in the sand , I avoid the plant disease section of my gardening books.It's are way too scary. With page after page of dreadful diseases, I find it too depressing to read. I prefer to think my healthy plants will avoid all these mysterious plagues.



But conditions are not always perfect. As you can see occasionally my plants look sick.Sadly my tulips drove me to the dreaded section on plant disorders. As near as I can tell they have tulip fire, a Botrytis fungus. So what can be done? When the rain stops, I will head out with my nippers and Clorox wipes and get rid of the sick looking plants.They are to be burned or banished to the landfill. Some of the flowers look pretty, but probably the best choice is to destroy the bulbs, and either remove and change the soil or never plant tulips in that spot again. I think for me Boytrytis is a four letter word. I just hope it ends with the tulips!

4 comments:

Kyna said...

I just close my eyes and hope my plant diseases will go away. They never do :P I have an issue with my camellia, that I should ask someone about. But I don't want to, because I'm sure it's something depressing and fatal lol.

Curbstone Valley Farm said...

Your Trillium is lovely, and Trilliums are a personal favorite of mine, but ours here are long done for the season. Your poor tulips though. I'm so sorry you have to banish them from your garden. How frustrating! I don't plant tulips here because our deer and gophers invariably eat them. Do you know if some tulip varieties are more resistant to this Botrytis blight?

Becky said...

Nope. When it comes to plant diseases I'm pretty clueless

Jean Campbell said...

Did you look at Tatyana's tulips in containers? Fresh bulbs, fresh soil will work. I had forgotten that tulip fire was the reason I had tulips in pots last year -- and the dog ate them! I easily forget and am already making plans for this fall.