perennialfan, one of the most overlooked step in IPM is to identify which plants are inherently susceptible to specific disease and/or insect problems and to avoid bringing them into the garden. Unfortunately, your Rudbeckia is especially prone to septoria, and other leaf diseases, as well. This is your reality, no matter what the condition of the soil is. It's especially true now that this location has seen a bad outbreak. However, there are some things you can do that might make a difference. Doing all you can to foster a healthy soil system IS important, of course. And hopefully, you did a good housekeeping job in the rubbeckia bed last year by removing all of the old mulch and fallen debris from the plants. Avoid over crowding and over-head watering, too. You might want to research the possibility of 'disease resistant' hybrids, I don't if anything like that exists for Rudbeckia. Good luck! Maybe last year was a fluke and with some good management practices you can have a nice display this year. It's one plant that is missing from my gardens (by choice), however.

I honestly try very hard NOT to be overparanoid about things like this. I do not ever use anything in my garden except for homemade compost. I don't even add things to my soil as most gardeners do. I am also the person who uses steam to clean her house instead of chemicals when at all possible. I also figure though that for the times I do need to buy things in the stores, like right now when my garden is being moved and my canned goods are running out, I have little control over what they have done to the plants they grew my food on and they probably did WAY worse than a little copper fungicide. I don't have pets, but I do have a now 3 and 4 year old. Last year when they were 2 and 3 I didn't let them in the garden for the day I sprayed , but after that I let them back in. BUT, my kids also don't munch on leaves (well not of the tomato plants anyway) so I am not sure how I would feel about that. I am not sure what your plan for next year is, but I did my research before deciding to move my garden for other reasons. I was going to do solar sterilization. You will obviously need to do something otherwise you will have the same issue next year that you have this year. I will add a link below to solar sterilization. I haven't tried it, but with my tomatoes dying off early I figured I had enough time to cut my losses cover the garden up and bake the soil if I needed to get it ready for this year. I would be curious if anyone on GW has tried it. Here is a link that might be useful: Soil solarization

All the inner leaves turned yellow first, ***** That's not typical of foliage infections caused by either bacteria or fungi. The spots on the leaves may have a yellow halo around them, but only initially. It sounds more like a systemic disease, but if so you should see some wilting. There are several diseases that can cause lesions on the stems, and yes, Early Blight is one of them, but there are many others. All the anti-fungals in the world aren't going to help if the infections are being caused by bacterial pathogns. If I were you I'd still go to that Problem Solver #2 in the Pest and Disease Forum and find the post that gives the TAMU link and take a look. Or could you post some pictures yourself? I in no way inteded to say that looking at pictures is useless, far from it,all I said was that often IDing diseases by pictures can be difficult. But there are many who have done so easily. Your local extension can also be a great help in helping to ID toamto diseases and I certainly would try there first before going to most nurseries. If it's Early Blight the spots on the leaves have distinctive concentric rings and the spots may be surrounded by a yellow halo. If it starts looking more bacterial after you look at some pictures then I'd get a copper containing prep and try that. If it's a systemic disease such as Fusarium that['s causing the foliage to turn yellow, then there is nothing that can help such systemic diseases. And Fusarium is found in many places in CA. but you should be seeing some wilting if it's Fusarium.\\And yes, there can be more than one infection present on a given plant at the same time. Carolyn

Here are several previous discussions on septoria that a search pulled up. You might want to review them for info and to compare the pictures to your plants. IMO you also have some early blight there. Had your plants been well mulched and the lower branches close to the ground removed you may have been able to avoid this problem or reduce its impact but the fungus is also air and seed born so it is quite common especially in wet springs. But for now, remove all the infected leaves and destroy them and begin a regular fungicide spray program with wither Daconil or Ortho Garden Disease Control. Septoria Fact Sheet. Good luck. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Septoria discussions