I have had these daylilies for several years. Recently, after blooming profusely over the summer, they began to go down hill. They are shriveling and turning brown. The pictures show how the leaves have withered and are turning brown. These daylily plants have been in this same bed undisturbed except for weeding for at least 5 years. The only thing I can find is that there has been a mole in the dirt in this bed. The petunias and pansies you see are doing well, but the daylilies are not. Any suggestion as to what's going on? Does a mole eat the tubers or something? HELP! As a note, Teresa, (T's Flowers and Things) these are not your plants. I have all of them in a separate bed and they are doing extremely well.

Do you know what daylily rust is? Might be that.

Can you take pics of single blades of foliage? Rust will have spots that when you rub them, come off orange on your finger or tissue...but it might have gone under by now.

Some foliage looks whitesh. ???

Hi Ron,

I can't really tell by your photos if there is rust on the foliage or not, when I enlarge then they get a little blurry.

The foliage on daylilies that have rust will eventually yellow and die http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

It also looks like it could be summer dormancy which will tend to happen toward the end of the season (doesn't neccessarily happen in the summer, just when it's really hot). Sometimes the roots will be rotting off and this will cause it to look like this. I have heard it referred to as summer rot (again doesn't have to be in the summer). It's not the same as crown rot, but the plants will shrink and the foilage will look like yours.

Since they have been in the bed for about 5 years they may have sunken too deep and just need to be lifted up so the crowns isn't more than an inch below the soil. This can cause the plants to start rotting also, being too deep.

So I go look for rust and find some leaves with orange looking spots, but the dew is still there and it does not appear to rub off - it's in the leaf. I loaded these pics without reducing them, so when you explode them you can see. I also loaded the original pics from above. They explode better



So I look a little farther and find all these little whitish bugs all over the base of the leaves. There is new green growth coming up in the middle, but these bugs are there. Aphids? I'm not a bug person, so I don't know. Should I spray with something? What about that mole? Do they eat roots or bugs?



From the previous post:

Ron, I would cut all this foliage back to just above the ground and clean out all the dead foliage around these daylilies. Throw this foliage in the trash and not on a compost pile. The whitish insects are aphids. You should then spray what is left of the daylilies with an insecticide for aphids that you can get at Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. It is a good sign that new growth is coming out of the centers. You might check to see if the aphids are also on your other daylilies and then spray those too.

Whatever it is, you need to clean off dead foliage, cut back what is left, and DISPOSE of it.

Still can't tell what the white is on the foliage

Can't see the bugs. Could be more than one kind so I can't say. If I ever get aphids, they are greenish looking but I am north of Boston.

Get a systemic bug spray AFTER you clean the foliage.

You'll have to look at the http that tink mentioned to compare for rust but it looks like what I saw in a garden in Texas that was rust. The plants at one section looked almost brown/dead.

Good luck.

Oh, and feeding them, might help!

HA! Casshigh and I were posting the same ideas at the same time!

It looks like rust to me, on the leaf with your hand. Because the foliage was wet, thats why there was no orange powder to rub off.

Dot

On the first and second photo the white looking bug things look like the molted skin of aphids. Usually the adults are green but when they grow they molt there outer skin and it will look like hundreds of white bugs all over. They sometimes look like they are moving because the wind/air will blow them.
Usually aphids aren't to bad of a problem, but in large enough numbers they can really harm a daylily.

Ron, If you get Bayer Three In One which can be a drench or sometimes found as a spray, it will take care of the aphids, any rust or other fungus, and even fertilize the daylilies at the same time. You should be able to find it at Lowes or Home Depot and is affordable.

Thanks to all of you. Tink, you are correct - all those little white things were not alive - so I guess they are aphid skins. So I took all of ya'll's advice (ya'll is singular - all of ya'll is plural) and I cleaned out the bed, sprayed with liquid Sevin and cut everything back. Let's hope I didn't kill all of them!! Here's what it looks like now:

I'll let you know if it all survives!

I agree with Casshigh on the Bayer 3in1, I like all the Bayer products.
I use other things for rust and insects since we have soooo many daylilies, we buy the larger professional products. But when I had less to tend to I'd use the Bayer advanced complete insect killer (soil and turf) which is good for foliage insects and soil insects and the tree and Shrub granules and love them.
For the past month we've had lots and lots of ladybug larvae everywhere so I try not to spray anything since they can do a better job than me at getting the insects, but since we have very mild winters (usually) we will have outbreaks of aphids and Spidermites when there are no beneficial insects around so we have to spray.

Ron,looks good. They should grow out in a few weeks and you'll never know they were cut back.

Had large amounts of aphids this year and the Bayer was pretty effective.

The bayer knocked my aphids right into the hereafter. We had lots of aphids this spring since we did had a really mild winter.

I agree about the Bayer products. Love them.

I am amazed at how the plants are coming back. The bugs are gone and new growth is sprouting. I will take some pictures and post them sometime today - before this hurricane starts dumping all the rain on us. Thanks to all of you for the suggestions! They work!! Pictures to follow after the sun comes up!!

Where is that "like" button?

Glad you had success Ron ~Jan