Re: Pollen Strike Rates

In a message dated 5/26/2004 1:42:29 AM Central Daylight Time, neilm@charter.net writes:


These past two years I get "takes" that rot off, or have the stalk rot out from under them.


Are you stripping or breakin' the spathe open so that it will drain? Likely you are. I use either the string from the tag or my thumbnail to to tear the spathe and create a drainway to prevent water accumlation. I also tear the lower leaves on the stalk to accomplish the same result. Later, after bloom season, when flaggin' the pods to make them easier to monitor, I recheck stalks for water traps.

I have encounterd less than 2% (1.56% to be exact) pod/stalk rot this year on podded stalks. The ones I have encounted, rightly or wrongly so, I attribute to other causes or failure on my part to pay attention to the draining process when tagging.

Too, I often encounter undesirables creatures and pathogens livin' the crevices and water traps durin' the restrippin' process.

In some previous years I have encountered high, high rates of pod rot when I did not strip or tear drainways in the lower leaves. Other years with wet, wet springs where the stalks and old blooms never truely dried and in spite of all my efforts (usually pretty lazy) I've had very high rates of stalk deterioation.

As a point in passing: The pathogen causing the pod/stalk rot is different from the one causing soft rot in rhizomes (stated as opinion with a very low degree of uncertainty).

Smiles,
Bill Burleson
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