Aster yellows problem
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
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3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoRelated Discussions
Echinacea - Aster Yellow
Comments (13)Agreed.... but i think the bigger issue is that plants are being sold that are obviously infected and expressing the distorted green petaled flowers on shelf from the growers and end vendors. I have seen it at big box stores and independent nurseries. The big box stores won't really do anything about it.. unless they take the time to tell the supply nursery... who then takes them off the shelf... which seems quite unlikely to happen. I have pointed the infected plants out to some nurseries and they pull them plants right in front of me and toss them.. which is good... but others won't do anything either since they have the chance of loosing $$$. I suppose it might be difficult to go back to the plant plug supplier a year or more later and say "hey.. those plugs you sold me are infected" without them just saying that they were infected at the nursery site. One nurseryman told me that all of the plants they had that were infected were very recent arrivals from the plug supplier.... so the infection is starting early in the plant cycle. So the lesson of the day is to never buy an echinacea that doesn't have some flowers that are fully opened and developed. This will at least give you a better chance of buying an uninfected plant (even though an infected plant doesn't always show it's infection right away). If you do see a single plant of the group though that is infected... i would avoid the whole lot of them....See MoreIs this Aster yellows on my phlox?
Comments (3)Phlox can also get Phlox Bugs, a tiny orange sucking insect that can cause mottled and curled leaves. They're bigger than aphids but still hard to see unless you look for them. They scurry around and will hide under the leaves or drop to the ground when you touch the plants. Phlox bugs overwinter in the egg stage in dead phlox stems so if you do have them, cut back the foliage this fall and put it in the garbage, then hopefully the problem won't return next year. That's my plan. I've been squishing and have sprayed a couple times with some kind of organic stuff but I'm still finding a few. I thought my phlox just had frost damage this spring so I didn't catch the problem very early. I have one patch that looks awful and not blooming like my others. Here is a link that might be useful: Phlox Bugs...See MoreReplanting After Aster Yellows
Comments (4)I would if I could, but I don't have a camera or any idea how to post a photo if I did. One plant definitely has the leafy green "bloom" that I've seen so many pictures of. Up until I saw that I had been taking a "wait and see" approach of removing any buds that looked odd, hoping that perhaps it was mites and any additional buds would be normal. All of the plants had normal blooms early on, but the buds or blooms which developed recently have either had no petals or very small petals. There has also been some distortion of the cones. Now the plants appear to be developing buds at the point where the leaves sprout from the stems. The leaves have not yellowed, but have developed a sorted of mottled appearance. I hope this more detailed description will be of some help. Again, I'm sorry I can't get a picture, as I'm sure that would eliminate much of the guess work. Thanks, Totally Confused...See MoreZinnias - is this Aster Yellows? How can I prevent it?
Comments (12)Hello Amanda, I wish I had seen your message thread sooner, but I haven't been participating in the Garden Clinic forum because I am not expert at that, I haven't been participating in the House Plants because I don't grow any actual House Plants, and I haven't been participating in the Growing from Seed forum because what I grow from seed is mostly my home-hybridized zinnias. I do continue my zinnia hobby into the Winter months by growing zinnias indoors under lights. Cross pollinating zinnias indoors is actually easier than outdoors. I did have Aster Yellows appear on an outdoor zinnia. It was quite weird, in that new plants seemed to be arising from the middle of the main bloom on my zinnia. At first I thought that its seeds were somehow germinating while green and still in the zinnia head. A Google search turned up similar photos as Aster Yellow, so I disposed of the plant in our trash almost like medical waste. You have shown some rather good pictures of small insects on your zinnias. I have had some pest problems in my indoor zinnias, but I wouldn't consider myself as "expert" with zinnia pests, indoors or out. But I have dealt with spider mites (they are the Borg), thrips, and aphids on my indoor zinnias. I did have problems with thrips and aphids in other years. I am pretty sure your zinnia pests are not spider mites, because they make obvious cobweb-looking webs, and crawl about on them in large numbers. And your photos are clearly not of aphids. That sort of leaves Thrips, but your photos don't look like the Thrips I have dealt with. I am not sure what your little guys are. Your photos show a single insect in each case. To do any significant damage, you would think they would need to appear in large numbers. It is not obvious that the insects in your photos are doing any significant actual damage. There may be another cause for your obvious plant damage. But you have reported that they are present in large numbers, so for the time being I will assume that those little guys are the problem. Changing the subject a little, as an amateur zinnia breeder, I am interested in your College of the Ozarks experience and the complimentary zinnia seeds they sent you. Your zinnias seem to differ from any of the commercial zinnia strains I am familiar with. Commercial seeds are heat treated to kill any disease (while not killing the seed by careful control of the heat process). The College of the Ozarks may not have that kind of specialized equipment to treat their seeds. I assume that all of the zinnia seeds I save are infected (even though the plants may look just fine) and I have my own chemical processes for disinfecting my saved zinnia seed. Some of the zinnia damage you have photographed may have been a disease or possibly even chemical damage. That chlorine-smelling water is a bit worrisome. Has it also been fluoridated? As far as I know, fluoridation does not have a smell. We live in a rural area and rent a farmhouse with its own water well. So, no chlorine or fluorine, but a rural well can have its own problems. I have been going for new zinnia flower forms in my amateur breeding hobby. This is an example. Click on the pic to see the larger version. If your problem is small insects, I am thinking that a good commercial systemic insecticide will be a solution. Something that you could apply to the soil rather than as a spray. I use a product like All In One Rose and Flower Carefrom Bayer Advanced, or a spray-on version of it. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)...See More- 3 years ago
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