I am only seeing thrip damage (but pretty bad damage) on just one cultivar, 'Magical Indeed'.

The slugs and snails, however, seem to be out shredding everything in force, thanks to our wet winter. I guess it's time for another round of Sluggo.

I am seeing leaf streak on some plants that I have not seen it on before - again maybe thanks to our wet winter. I think we may have touched on this before... whether there was any connection between rust resistance and leaf streak resistance, but I can't remember if there was any consensus or conclusion. We should maybe have a line in the database for leaf streak status (resistant, susceptible), just as for rust.

At least the damage caused by thrips, slugs/snails, leaf streak, and rust can all more or less be easily identified. What has me stumped at the moment is that *something* seems to have attacked one particular pot of one particular daylily. My garden helpers claim it was a rabbit (solely on the basis of having seen a rabbit in the area, as though they haven't been all over the garden), but the rabbits have access to an entire garden of daylilies, so why that pot? (Rabbits (supposedly) don't like daylilies anyway (at least per some sites), and that has been my experience here, these past 3-4 years of the rabbit invasion.) The pot *had* gotten knocked on its side, and this was in an area where there was a gopher hole, so now I am wondering if maybe some wandering gopher took a liking to the leaves? It could, theoretically, have also been eaten by a deer (daylily foliage is a salad bar to them, and one particular cultivar here must be the equivalent of deer candy or deer nip)... but I think that we have now FINALLY succeeded in fencing the deer OUT, as evidenced by no damage whatsoever to several roses and certain other plants, including daylily scapes with buds and blooms.

Anyway, getting back to rust... my bottle of Serenade concentrate has arrived, so maybe (among all of the other chores tomorrow) I can work myself up to try it out on a test plant. (Spraying bacteria around (supposedly beneficial or not) almost seems as bad as the disease...)

Oh please keep us informed about the results of Serenade. I am very interested to know if it works.

Gonna try and answer several different questions in one post....

" But then that would wipe out any possibility of hiking or long dog walks all year round, which means that I would be even heavier than I am now"

Snowshoeing, skiing, hitch the dog to a dog sled

"(And for that matter, IS it even legal to sell plants without a nursery license, and can you get one without "them" (TPTB) mandating a regular routine of chemical spraying?"

I think you can ship if the plants are visibly rust free but others here who actually do that and live in the USA can answer better than I can. Daylily rust is no longer a federal quarantine issue but individual states can set their own rules. If this is something you're contemplating, phone your state's plant protection agency and ask.

"I am brand new at daylily and just wonder about rust, is it the worst thing that can happened to daylilies ? When you said sprayed it, if not dish soap what do you recommend using (I don't have rust, but would like to prepare just in case, since it's been raining like crazy here). If not treated what worst can happens to daylily infected ? Will it kill it... "

If you don't mind using "chemicals" then you would ideally rotate two or more fungicides if you got rust. The best ones are very expensive so wait until you get it! If you don't get it badly you may get away with occasionally using a contact insecticide. You don't have to do anything, you can just try to ignore it. It should not kill the plants but if they have it year round (does your foliage die back in winter?) it could weaken the plant and make it vulnerable to other problems, at least in theory. Avoid watering the plants late in the day if you can, so that they're not wet overnight, and don't space them close together such that it impedes air circulation.

"Is thrips and aphids are the worst ? I notice that some stuff on the leaves, firstI thought it was just dirts or pollen fell into my daililies leaves (Kwanzo has been growing pretty big leaves) and today I saw a some kind of white stuff and my Lilies look damaged from bugs too, so I sprayed them with Insect Killer Spray.."

I don't know that it's easy to say which is worst. Aphids proliferate quickly and are slurping up the plant's sap and therefore nutrients which is obviously not a good thing. Thrips don't build up to such numbers but they do damage flowers. Their leaf damage isn't particularly significant unless you get them a lot worse there than I do here. Not sure what the white stuff might be, unless it's shed aphid skins. Does it look like this (bottom picture):

http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

Do you still have the "pollen" on the leaves? That sounds more like it could be rust, if it's not actually pollen. If it is rust it will still be there so can you post a picture?

"What should I do to avoid/treat this problem (bugs)..."

There's no one-size fits all other than growing the plants as well as you can, avoiding over-fertilizing etc. because high nitrogen encourages certain pests. Otherwise the treatment needs to be tailored to the specific problem. Most soft-bodied insects can be controlled with insecticidal soap. Aphids can be difficult because they get down into the leaf bases which is why people often use a systemic insecticide. Thrips are also difficult because they get in crevices, inside buds etc. where a contact spray won't get them. But you don't have to kill every bug that you see, you can let nature's beneficials take care of them unless they become intolerable (and yes, I know for many people one bug is intolerable )

"stumped at the moment is that *something* seems to have attacked one particular pot of one particular daylily. "

Any chance of a picture?

"I am seeing leaf streak on some plants that I have not seen it on before - again maybe thanks to our wet winter. I think we may have touched on this before... whether there was any connection between rust resistance and leaf streak resistance, but I can't remember if there was any consensus or conclusion. We should maybe have a line in the database for leaf streak status (resistant, susceptible), just as for rust."

There are other things that can look like leaf streak. but to answer the question there isn't necessarily a connection between resistance to one disease and resistance to another. Some daylilies are even susceptible to one strain of daylily rust but not to other strains to same degree. Where resistance is primarily genetic a plant is going to be resistant to whatever it has resistance genes for. For a disease that "likes" weakened plants then it may be susceptible to anything opportunistic if in that state. Leaf streak most likely needs an injury from something else before it can infect the plant, rust can go for any genetically susceptible plant including perfectly healthy ones. There is such a thing as systemic acquired resistance but I don't know how that might work with resistance related to specific genes. With rusts, for example, avoiding high nitrogen and ensuring adequate potassium are nutritional steps one can take towards reducing the problem. Some other plant diseases are favoured by low nitrogen, high pH, low pH, etc. etc.

Java......Rot is the worst thing for daylilies, its the only thing that will kill them. I consider snails and slugs to be next, because they eat the blooms. Thrips aphids and rust are annoying. Thats how I see it, but I dont sell daylilies, and I realize there are some that get really whipped up over rust. It is ugly, it does make the leaf die back and makes the plant in general, not attractive, thats why I try to keep up with it. I would not loose any sleep over it, but it sure doesnt make good eye candy to go along with the flowers. The smaller/weaker/newer the(sdlg) the plant, for me, the more likely to have rust. I do have a couple of big boys with some, but it doesnt seem to spread.

Here it is Larry, hope you can see it,
I also add the pictures of the daylilies in their new bed (Did I do this right?)
Thank you so much!

It's hard to see what the white things are, did you check out the link I posted above to a picture of shed aphid skins to see if they looked like that? It does look as though the inner leaves are a bit mottled as if something has been feeding on them.

I'm guessing from your daylily leaves "stripes" that your soil pH is on the high side, which is not unusual in Texas from what I understand?

My native soil I think is white clay, silt and lots of limestone rocks...
It's probably aphids with the white stuff on the leaves, but this is just very recent... before it just got brown/black droppings like, and since my neighbor red tip tree/shrubs has been dropping its pollen allover my flower beds and plants I thought that was it, but I think it could be some kind of bugs that I can't see and don't know...
Thank you Sue !

It does look like aphids to me. The leaves really look like they are in need of something.

Thank you Sue, Larry, Pam and everyone else that always helpful !
So if it's Aphids/Thrips shoud I countinued spraying them with Insect Killer/Insectidal Soap?
For my high PH what kind of fertilizer I should get to help this...I also notice some pale color leaves on my NOids...

again and

I would check the plants each day for a few days, and if the aphids return I would spray them again, and repeat.
I don't know what to tell you about the fertilizer, soils are so different,

Id hit those plants up with some milorganite, or something with a good bit of iron, Luckily the aphids are easy to suffocate, but like Larry said, you might have to keep on it. I think the plants look healthy in general.

javaMom said:
For my high PH what kind of fertilizer I should get to help this...I also notice some pale color leaves on my NOids...

What you appear to have is a micronutrient deficiency which may include more than one nutrient. What I would look at first would be lowering the soil pH but that would need a soil test to determine how much sulfur or other material to use. Another option would be to use a fertilizer with chelated micronutrients, or a micronutrient foliar fertilizer.

Micronutrients become less available to plants as the pH goes higher. Your daylilies have interveinal chlorosis which means either iron and/or manganese are not getting into the plant in sufficient amounts. There seems to be some wider banding which may mean other micronutrients are deficient as well - hard to say without a soil/leaf test. Assuming those elements are in the soil, which is the common scenario, but being blocked by the pH, then lowering the pH would make all micronutrients more available again (with one exception that probably isn't a problem in any case).

Thanks Sue & Pam,
The daylilies are Kwanzo and a bunches of them in the raised bed with my Pear Tree's and lilies, maybe I should take some of them out so they will get enough nutrients and add necessary fertilizer...
Also on my picture with the new daylilies I planted, did I plant them right ? I don't know how deep I have to plant those...

Friends,

Would love your prayers so we won't get the potentially severe storms with possible tornadoes threat coming to DFW...
Thank you and God bless you all...

Someone mentioned snails and blooms.... they don't generally damage the blooms here, but they do shred the leaves something awful (and maybe those shredded leaves are more susceptible to things like leaf streak?).

I did a little researching last night, and supposedly you are not allowed to ship plants (from any state in the US) unless you have a nursery license. EBay has an interesting page on this: http://www.ebay.com/gds/Sellin...

(I'm sure that I've bought any number of plants from people without such licenses... I guess according to eBay I'm as guilty as the grower...)

I then went on to look up the nursery license application for my state. They expect you to sort yourself into a category (landscaper, retail, "producer", and so on), but nothing quite fits the category of a small home nursery. The closest category would be for a producer, who sells at least $1000 a year in plants. That doesn't quite fit my idea of a small scale home nursery. They also asking about "growing grounds". Hmm... my growing grounds are my back yard... I don't think these applications really have the small home owner/gardener in mind... and I really don't think I'd enjoy having inspectors randomly dropping by and into my yard.

In any event, I would only sell if I had registered/introduced daylilies of my own to sell... and since the seedlings aren't exactly cooperating, that time is going to be a ways off.

Re the Serenade.... we're supposed to get rain tomorrow, so I'm not sure if it is worth applying it today. I'll have to read the instructions (how many hours before rain).

Praying for you java. Let us know how you are after they've passed please.

So we can't send plants to friends ? even in the same State ?

All I know is that people send plants anyway. So ....

Supposedly.

The USDA (or whomever dictates all of this and lays down the law) obviously knows that there are countless "hobbyists" sending plants through the mail. (That is at least one reason why they gave up on the federal quarantine for daylily rust, or at least that is my understanding; they knew that that hobbyists were spreading it regardless.) That said, I never heard of anyone having to pay fines or anything, though a couple of times I had incoming plants interdicted here, and got strongly worded letters from the CA Dept. of Agriculture.

I made up one quart of Serenade and sprayed it around. It doesn't smell anywhere near as bad as comments I'd read led me to believe. It does say that you have to use the mix within 24 hours, and since we are supposedly getting rain tomorrow, I ended up spraying a lot more plants than I had intended, not to let it go to waste. (Most daylilies here have some degree of resistance anyway, as most rust buckets get the boot, so it's not like the garden is a horror of rust.) So the spray went on a couple of rust buckets that I want to keep for particular reasons, a few others somewhat less rusty, and some recent acquisitions (because, who knows...).

In Michigan we have a small scale growers license and that is what I get because I am only a backyard gardener that sells on the internet only.