Re: CULT: first casualty

From: Gullo <tgf@frontiernet.net>

Hi Jeff,

     Sorry to here about your casualties, it is always frustrating to lose some
of one's cherished plants.  Might be an opportunity to see if any cultivars or
species managed to survive the onslaught, and perhaps might be more resistant.
Could be useful information for hybridizing purposes.  I wondered if you grow
any rebloomers, and if so, how they fared this winter.  I've been doing some
reading on salicylic acid ( aspirin ) and would suggest that trying some might
not be a bad idea to see if it helps control the Botrytis.  I'm going to do
some testing with aspirin this season and see how it effects overall plant
health.  Good luck to you and your irises.

Michael Gullo
West Walworth, New York, USA
zone 6

Jeff and Carolyn Walters wrote:

> From: "Jeff and Carolyn Walters" <jcwalters@bridgernet.com>
>
>  dkramb@badbear.com writes:
>
>  << While doing spring cleanup in the gardens today, I found the first iris
>   casualty of the year.  >>
>
> The loss of any treasured denizen of the garden is a cause for distress,
> but now that a semblance of spring has arrived here and the soil has dried
> out enough for me to get out into the garden and view the situation at
> close hand, I find that the iris beds bear some resemblance to the
> vegetable equivalent of the aftermath of Pickett's charge. The cause of all
> the slaughter is not canister shot and minie balls, but Botrytis, which has
> flourished to an unparalleled extent in the relatively mild weather we have
> endured this winter. Temperatures were 10 degrees or more above average for
> January and February, which brought them into the range at which Botrytis
> is capable of active growth and meant that precipitation fell either as
> rain or snow that melted with the repeated thawing periods to provide the
> ample moisture at soil level needed to sustain that growth. The damage has
> been both more extensive and intensive than I have ever experienced before
> (and Botrytis here is the bane of the iris grower in the same sense that
> borers and soft rot are where they prevail). I have found damage in nearly
> 30 clumps so far, including medians, which have not usually been affected
> in the past, and the spread of the rot within the infected clumps is much
> worse than usual since the fungus has been active for such a long time
> (usually Botrytis is only active for a couple of weeks during the "big
> thaw" at the end of winter). I was aware that I had an active Botrytis
> problem earlier in the winter, and sprayed affected clumps that I could
> reach with fungicide, but that does not seem to have been completely
> effective in suppressing the futher growth of the fungus where it was
> applied.
>
> The good news is that the dwarf bulbous irises (reticulata, danfordiae, and
> hybrid cultivars) sprang into bloom over the weekend, nearly a week earlier
> than they ever have before, so the iris parade is under weigh, even in the
> Zone 4/5 borderlands (admittedly after the equivalent of a Zone 7 winter)
> at an elevation of 4800 feet!
>
> Jeff Walters in northern Utah  (USDA Zone 4/5, Sunset Zone 2)
> jcwalters@bridgernet.com
> Where we are currently experiencing the attenuated effects of the storm
> Dennis Bishop and Mike Sutton have already mentioned
>
>
>
> .
>
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