I don't recall having rust show up this early, but my memory is not that good.
'Awesome Blossom' has nice broad dark green leaves but I noticed several had turned yellow, and when I checked the specks of rust were on several leaves up the full length almost. It does have a rust resistance rating of 2.0, but looks like it is going to be a rusty year with all this rain we have had. So far all I have done is pulled off the rusty leaves, tomorrow I may spray with liquid dish detergent.

Larry, early spring rains and humid conditions bring on early rust. I have it, but the nasty strong winds we have had created even more damage to leaves that sorta looks like rust. It doesn't matter what the rust rating is on any plant. Only important is what it does in your garden.

I don't have much rust because we haven't had 2" of rain this month. It's been humid, but very little rain. It goes north of us and south of us. We all know that problem!

Thank you Larry for the heads up. I haven't seen any here yet.

There has been some rust here too, thanks to the rain that we have had the past couple of months. I've been pulling leaves, and may punt another plant. (It's disheartening... from it's parentage, I would have expected better resistance. I'll wait a bit and see what it does, I guess.)

In the seedling patch, several of them showed some signs of rust late last winter (when they were still crammed in 4" pots and there was heavy rust pressure in the garden), but I planted them out anyway. A couple of the bigger and older ones are presently looking suspicious, but the rest, thus far, seem okay. (Knock on wood...) The sketchy ones are from my dabbling at trying to improve rust resistance in near white tets, so no big surprise there.

I've definitely been seeing rust on many of mine. We've had a wet and warm Winter. I hope to "eventually" (not sure how long that may take) have less instead of more rusty daylilies in my garden.

Well, I'm slowly getting there. When I get around to it, some number of cultivars will get the boot from the garden this year, at least partly due to rust susceptibility.

The problem is that new plants come in, it is not always possible to research parentage, and I am still a sucker for certain characteristics...

But this year I am buying few(er) daylilies, and most of those should have some degree of rust resistance.

In our seedling patches, we can select for rust resistance.

And so it goes...

Rust has been here already in zone 9a,
but it is becoming hot so rapidly that it may not do well for long...

Larry,

How and what kind of liquid dish detergent do you use and how often do you spray? Does it prevent rust or control it?

Thanks !

Susie

This year I have held off on spraying anything. Last year I just used a cheap dollar store brand dish detergent and it seemed to help control the rust on those plants. I have no proof it was the detergent or coincidence, but I think at least some form of Dawn dish detergent has been actually shown to aid in controlling rust, but I know of no special ingredient in it that was the reason. I think you see Dawn detergent recommend all the time just because it was the one actually used in the test, I doubt it is actually much better than many others. Although, I have read to avoid some, I just don't remember why that was.

The original study was with UltraDawn at 1% to water. As far as I remember it was most likely lemon. Larry, I think people say to avoid the antibacterial ones because of the added chemicals. The one used in the study would not have been antibacterial.

Here's the original study if anyone wants to read it:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Ethsi...

Have already sprayed twice this year. Rust hit early because of the cooler weather with the rains. Will continue to spray until hot summer weather which means it won't grow.

And this is one reason I am glad I live in the north. The few times I have had rust, it thankfully dies off in the winter.

Yesterday I walk the garden beds and didn't see any rust. Thank goodness. Will keep looking.

I've looked and have not found rust susceptibility ratings on specific daylilies. Where can I find this?

The best place I know is right here in the ATP daylily database. The trouble is so many thousands have not been rated.
Search by characteristics (height, bloom color, etc)
Then select:
Rust Resistance Decimal Score:
Use the down arrow to select the rating you want, one is the best and five is the worst.

Somewhere I did notice some vendors starting to at least say in the descriptions of their plants if they appear to be rust resistant in their gardens. The problem being there that most have a spray program so really are not aware which ones might show rust if not sprayed.

Ive got rust too, just sprayed again today. Isnt the end of the world to me, I do like to control it tho. Luckily, so far, no slugs. Those things tore up my flowers last year, horrible. At least the rust doesnt bother the flower. Im about to throw all those little sf's I got last year away. They are really the only things that I cant get rid of the rust. The big plants, not such a problem.

I had a beautiful NOID plant in the garden, very tall and stout looking, but today I noticed it had a bad case of rust developing on all three fans. I took my knife and cut it all down to about an inch of the ground, and I am going to see how that affects the plant and the rust. A few more named cultivars have started getting more rusty leaves. I am really wanting to go the entire year and not spray and see just which plants don't get rust or at least not too bad. I just don't know if I will be able to go through with that plan as I watch more and more of them succumb to rust. My Awesome Blossom plant and my Tuscawilla Tigress are two that even though listed as rust resistant are showing more and more rust on a daily basis. I have not seen a scape on Tuscawilla Tigress yet, so I may just cut it down low also.

The problem with plants that have rust ratings is that most of them are 15 yr old or older. I don't do many older plants, so just have to take my chances. I sprayed today for rust and for aphids.

Arlene - I do a search as Larry instructed above and often just put in rust resistance and not necessarily a rating. But I do it both ways to find all the cultivars. When I do that, the list it typically not very long because I am also searching for ev or sev at the same time. Larry is right ... which thousands of registered cultivars, only a small percentage has been rated for rust.

I also look at pedigree. ATP has an awesome database because not only can you do a search by name, but the daylily database will list parents of a cultivar (if known). You can click on each of the parent's names and check their rust resistance. And often I go on to the grandparents to also check them. If I see any rated as rust susceptible of 4.0 or 5.0 .... I don't bother considering the cultivar. The genes are there for rust susceptibility, IMHO. Granted, I do know that some children from such plants can show rust resistance, but since I like to hybridize, I prefer not to take the chance. There are too many other daylily cultivars out there for me to try, so I don't waste my time or money on a possible rusty plant or a plant with genetics that might show rust susceptibility.

I hope this info is helpful.

I also like some of the older cultivars. Breeding them with newer ones might surprise you with some very nice, rust resistant children!

@philljm, Jan it has been awhile. Good to see you.
Larry, Daryl Apps use to cut his rust infected plant to the ground also. He also sprayed them after doing so. I forgot what he used to treat them. The article is on the web. I will see if I can find and share it here.