Viewing post #527446 by virginiarose

spunky1 said:I guess it doesn't make any difference where you live rust can show up and usually does in the late summer or early fall. Here we have no winter to help control it so spraying all year is our only recourse. I do believe the rust problem is not near the problem as it was when it first broke out in 2001. At that time we grew over 1200 registered daylilies and several thousand seedling and the worse thing before 2001 was something called "leaf streak", I still do not know to this day if I have ever had or seen "leaf streak". When rust was discovered in the southeast there were many commercial daylily gardens shut down by state inspectors including ours. There recommendations were, cut the foliage to the ground, put it in garbage bags to be picked up with the garbage, and spray with several different things that were being used for rust on farm crops, such as peanuts, soy beans, corn, and other crops. These inspectors really had no idea because this was something brand new to daylilies, but over the years with daylily people and the AHS using different products through trial and error we now have 3-4 chemicals that work really well(Michele has already listed them). We would like for everything to be organic also but doing what we do on the scale we do it is not possible.

@spunky1, What did you do when they shut you down? Did you really whack 1200 daylilies? What a job that must have been. I am thankful for the chemicals! Organic only means I use them as a last resort if things get out of hand and to bring it under control so I can manage it. I understand you could never deal with this without them because of your huge numbers.