Me again with my questions about DLs not doing well... I have one that really doesn't look well.
As you can see in the pictures there is almost no center growth or the leaves tha emerge are suddenly "broken". There is one leaf that is like cut open in the middle. I have this on another plant but the overall look is a lot better than this. Is this spring sickness again or something else? When I went to garden center for buying fertilizer a man told me that stunted grow and damaged leaves are always associated with fungus... what can I do to help it?
Many thanks!

It looks like spring sickness. The only other time I've seen something like that wasn't spring sickness, it was from a spray. If you haven't sprayed it recently then I would put it down to spring sickness. You can either leave it alone, or give it some soluble fertilizer which may or may not help. Some people cut off those fans to tidy them up so if it bothers you you could try that. The damage happened some time ago and there's not much you can do other than that.

This is a bad case of spring sickness! I will give some liquide fertilizer and see. Cutting the fan doesn't help the plant right? I didn't use any spray, I fertilized 20 days ago with the italian miracle grow in granular form, then added some chelated iron the past friday. I'm hating this spring sickness!

No, that's not bad. Bad is when the fan dies Quite often they do recover enough to flower though. That one doesn't look too bad. I'm not sure whether cutting the fan helps the plant or the gardener. It may speed up new growth from the centre but the trade-off is that you lose photosynthesizing leaves. Perhaps that's something we should look into and experiment.

Could any of the granular fertilizer have accidentally got inside the middle of the fan?

You're joining the many of us that hate spring sickness! That's why we started the informal spring sickness task force many years ago, but it's such a difficult problem to study because it can be erratic and only happens once a year. For example one year I experimented with autumn fertilizer on half of one bed and not the other half. None of the plants got spring sickness the next spring, it was a low spring sickness year, so that experiment told us nothing. That's something that has caused many false hopes because most people treat all their plants at the same time, so there are no untreated ones to compare.

sooby said:No, that's not bad. Bad is when the fan dies Quite often they do recover enough to flower though. That one doesn't look too bad. I'm not sure whether cutting the fan helps the plant or the gardener. It may speed up new growth from the centre but the trade-off is that you lose photosynthesizing leaves. Perhaps that's something we should look into and experiment.

Could any of the granular fertilizer have accidentally got inside the middle of the fan?

You're joining the many of us that hate spring sickness! That's why we started the informal spring sickness task force many years ago, but it's such a difficult problem to study because it can be erratic and only happens once a year. For example one year I experimented with autumn fertilizer on half of one bed and not the other half. None of the plants got spring sickness the next spring, it was a low spring sickness year, so that experiment told us nothing. That's something that has caused many false hopes because most people treat all their plants at the same time, so there are no untreated ones to compare.

Sue, what happens if the fertilizer gets inside the middle of the fan? I'm that has happened to me with the Milorganite once or twice.

@Sooby, no grains in the middle of the plant, I used a spoon and put it just around the base.
I showed the pictures to the grower, he's far from me so I sent picture and immediately he replied that it's a fungus that modifies the structures of leaves so they can't emerge. He said to use a spray fungicide, it doesn't matter what, the first I find around. I'm thinking I could try that on a test plant. Do you think so?

I imagine that the weather conditions which encourage spring sickness have long passed. This occasionally happens here, and I allow the plant to grow out of it. What's done is done, and there's really nothing to fix now.

If you're considering a fungicide, get a systemic (if one exists) that's effective for this fungus and apply it next winter/spring as a preventative measure.

Many thanks Ken.
He didn't told me what fungus is, I asked him but the last reply was to spray every plant in the garden with a whatever fungicide I can find, he said it's a long story and for now he didn't have the time to explain. But I don't know if he was thinking to spring sickness too.

This plant in particular seems not to be able to grow out of it. The others are better now (I had four suffering) but this is having real hard time (to my eyes).

Pat, I just had a feeling I remember someone having problems with something that looked similar to spring sickness and some fertillizer granules had fallen down into the middle of the plant. I can't remember for sure if that was a case where we finally figured out it was the spreader-sticker on a pesticide application and not the fertilizer, so just thought it better to eliminate that possibility. In theory a reasonably high analysis fertilizer there could burn the plant.

Sabrina, the fungus suspected of possibly being involved in spring sickness is Aureobasidium microstictum, the same fungus that causes leaf streak. It's somewhat possible that a fungicide application might reduce it but there are no guarantees it would and for the few plants you have I wouldn't have thought it worth experimenting. One of the task force members did some testing with fungicides and insecticides/miticides and although both reduced the amount of spring sickness they didn't stop it. The application may actually need to be applied in the previous year. Another fungus that has been suggested to be involved is a new Botrytis species but that study did not replicate typical spring sickness.

No don't spray with whatever fungicide you can find! Different fungicides work against different fungi. If any fungicide would work for all fungal diseases then we wouldn't need all the different ones that are available. If you really want to try then look for one that is as broad spectrum as you can get.

Your plant is not that bad, try not to worry about it (impossible? )

Thanks Sue...I most certainly don't want to burn my babies!

What about a hair spray since the center leaves are all floppy?

I really don't know what I am going to do. This man is a grower and a hybridizer so I guess he knows what he says, but then I know that you all on here know what you say.

So I stand here and can't decide if making a test is useful or not!

I hope your daylily will conquer this Spring Sickness and come out stronger and better !

It's normal for a plant to "stall" for a bit after being hit with spring sickness, but you're in a pleasant climate, and the plant looks big and strong otherwise, so give it some time. If the plant has to generate new growth from a dormant growth bud, it could take quite a while to show up, but most of the time I see this, it recovers and continues to produce new leaves from the center.

I suspect that in most of the cases where spring sickness has killed a daylily, it was either in a much colder climate, and the plant was under stress from winter, or it was in an extremely hot, humid, near-tropical climate where fungi can really thrive.

About how many hours of direct sun are these plants getting now?

Thanks Ken.
We have a lot of humidity at night, and the sun is only two-three hours for now. I have mountains and houses surrounding the apartment and until summer the sun is quite low.