2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Gray rot, or botrythiasis, can affect not only daffodils, but also some berry and vegetable crops. This unfortunate and very common attack closer to the end of the season can cause massive plant death. Losses will be no less significant during their drying or winter storage. But you really want to grow luxurious and bright daffodils that delight the eye with their flowering! To realize this desire will help the timely identification of a disgusting ailment and immediately taken measures to get rid of it as soon as possible
A few words about the disease
The most recognizable sign of the gray rot of daffodils is considered to be the mass spotting of the leaves - the formation of oval or rounded light brown spots of various sizes begins on the leaves of beautiful flowers. And in places where spores are introduced, tiny watery spots appear on the perianths, which turn brown after some time. When wet weather is established, the buds lick and gradually become covered with grayish fungal sporulation. Gray cervical rot begins to develop, the stalks break and the plants die.
On the bulbs of daffodils attacked by gray rot, you can notice the appearance of unpleasant yellowish-brownish specks. All infected tissues quickly soften and begin to rot, and a little later, the bulbs wrinkle and turn brownish.
The causative agent of the unpleasant misfortune is a microscopic fungus belonging to the genus Botrytis. This ubiquitous fungus forms sclerotia, which persist in the soil for quite a long time. Under unfavorable conditions, the development of sclerotia occurs on decaying plant remains, and the spores they form are carried by the wind over fairly substantial distances.
In most cases, a massive defeat of daffodils occurs in the second half of summer, when the humidity rises markedly, and the thermometer drops to fifteen to eighteen degrees. Settling along with moisture on flowers, stems and leaves, harmful spores penetrate into plant tissues and germinate.
The spread of a dangerous infection usually occurs from top to bottom, that is, from the stalks with leaves, it gradually penetrates into the bulbs. Especially severely gray rot rages on heavy clay soils, with high soil and air humidity, with excessive nitrogen nutrition, with excessively thickened plantings and with a lack of potassium and phosphorus.
How to fight
To significantly reduce the susceptibility of daffodils to the ill-fated misfortune, all used planting material must necessarily be healthy. If there is no complete confidence in its quality, then it is recommended to sprinkle the bottoms of the planting grooves with a mixture of wood ash with clean river sand before planting the bulbs. And after that, in three stages, prophylactic spraying with copper oxychloride (for ten liters of water - 40 g) or one percent Bordeaux liquid is carried out. The first treatment is carried out immediately as soon as the first sprouts appear, the second - before budding, and the third - immediately after flowering.
During the growing season, every one and a half to two weeks, preventive spraying is carried out with a solution of captan (0.5%), a copper-soap mixture (20 g of green soap and 2 g of copper sulfate) or 1 - 1.5% Bordeaux liquid.
The daffodils should be dug up as early as possible, after which they are thoroughly washed, and then treated with a solution of foundationol (0.2%) with immediate drying for five to seven days at a temperature of twenty-five to thirty degrees. If you leave the bulbs extracted from the ground to lie at room temperature, gray rot will begin to progress and can finally destroy them. It is also recommended to treat the bulbs with sulfur, and they should only be stored in dry rooms.
All flowers and bulbs affected by gray rot must be removed from the sites and promptly burned.
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