Re: CULT: Botrytis

Hi Laurie

Chuck Chapman had a preventive treatment for botrytis which I am wishing
I had saved .....since I have a couple of those too this year.  Perhaps he
will post it again, I to hate seeing that stuff.  I only lost two irises
over the winter and it was both to that.

Sandra
SE Manitoba


laurief wrote:

Borers may not scare me anymore, but botrytis does! I've only seen it in my garden once before about 5 yrs ago on one rhizome. Well, it's baaaaaack! At least, I *think* that's what I saw yesterday when I finally got up the nerve to see how the main beds are doing this early in the season. Irises are just starting to awaken here, and I wanted to see if I could tell who did and didn't survive the last 6 months of winter.

In my wanderings up and down the rows, I found several rzs covered in what can best be described as medium brown velvet - obviously a fungus of some type. When I saw botrytis years ago, it was a bit later (and warmer) in the season and presented itself as a puffy black mass atop the rz. I'm guessing that yesterday's "velvet" is just a less mature manifestation of botrytis. Am I correct?

If this is botrytis, I know I need to dig and destroy the affected rzs and their surrounding soil, but here is my question: how much of the surrounding soil do I need to remove to be fairly certain of eliminating the botrytis spores? 2" all the way around? 6"? 1'? Should I hire a backhoe to come remove the top 3' of soil from all of my iris beds (I'm hoping that would be overkill)?

Neil, I know you've dealt with botrytis in the past. Help!

Laurie


-----------------
laurief@paulbunyan.net
http://www.geocities.com/lfandjg/
http://www.angelfire.com/mn3/shadowood/irisintro.html
USDA zone 3b, AHS zone 4 - northern MN
normal annual precipitation 26-27"
slightly acid clay soil

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS

Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index