Help!

[Diana Kulaga]

Well, we have a little problem here. Walked out on the patio on Friday morning and saw severe damage to a number of Phals. Mind you, seeing them every day is unavoidable, so I can assure you that these probs were not evident the day before. Clearly, something had been in the works, but I hadn't noticed.

The leaves are turning yellow starting at the outer edges. The under sides of the leaves look moldy and pitted. Some of them have what look like sunken areas on the top of the leaves, but those are not soft. There is no sign of snails/slugs, and those things would be unlikely to find them where they live. There is no big web infestation, so I don't think it's spider mites. My guess is some kind of mites, however. Saturday we sprayed everything (*everything*!) with soap and oil with some alcohol thrown in for good measure - 6 tb/gallon.

Pictures going up in abpo in 1 minute. I'm really worried. Here I teach a class for newbies, and look what I've got.

Diana

[Rob]

Well, lets hope I'm wrong like usual then... Did your plants get cold by any chance?

Rob

[V_coerulea]

"Diana Kulaga" [e-mail] wrote in message news:j8Ych.8635$ [e-mail]...

Sorry, Diana, I've been in and out of the loop here for a few months. I had something similiar to what you're going through before I started growing exclusively in a well screened GH. Beside that, what I did at the time to start saving a fairly good number of plants with great success was to mix up a bushel basket of Physan to the old time concentration of 1 Tbsp/gal. A mature plant can take that as a 15-20 min total immersion soak. I stripped off all damaged leaves and roots, wired the plant label onto the plant and tossed it in the bushel while I tackled the next. I expanded some long-fibered sphagnum with Physan and spread it in the bottom of several of those big transparent storage tubs you get at WalMart. They make a great ICU. Pack in the patients dripping wet. After several days, any with some roots and no other signs of the creeping crud can be moved to an ICU where the top is left askew for better air movement, and then potted fresh in a frew more days. Treat new pots and medium with Physan. A followup spray of Physan can be done a few days later at the lower rate of 1 tsp/gal rate. For the others left in ICU, treat as you would for the sealed bag treatment for invalids. Move to ICU #2 as you see improvement. Re-treat a second time in ICU #1 if you see any sign of the crud returning. I saved all but a few which was probably my own fault. Good luck playing nurse on the massive scale. It's a lot more demanding than just being a caretaker. And it's less rewarding seeing a new root rather than a new flower but it does beat playing in traffic. Keep us all appraised of success or failure. Gary