Sorry for the delay, I am not really up to speed on how this site works and I didn't see the replies. Thank you! I am in Nova Scotia, Canada. I live in a rural setting. Last year I had a lot of problems with my echinacea. I had all the symptoms of aster yellows, but finally decided it was coneflower rosette mites. They dammage the flowers which end up looking very similar to those affected by aster yellows. It was so strange, the flowers looked like something from a bad science experiment! I ripped out all the affected plants and cut back all my echinacea in the fall, which I don't usually do. I cleaned up everything. That seemed to take care of the problem, thank goodness, not a single distortion so far this year. While you were kindly writing replies, I was in the garden pulling out all the echinacea with leaves like in the picture I posted. It was hot and sunny. Before I had all of them pulled out, the rain started and lasted for about 4 days. I was very worried about what I would find when I went back into the garden. Well, much to my surprise, it hadn't spread at all and everything looked great! It still does! In fact, thinning out the plants and the addition of compost in the spring has created some very healthy looking plants. Oh, and I discovered that ants were farming the leafhoppers, which is something I didn't know about. It was easy to spot where they were laying their eggs because of all the ants around them. I removed these leaves too, and have very few leafhoppers now. So, one problem down and who knows what the next one will be. LOL! Thank you all! It is wonderful to find such support!
