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!
