It's a virus, once you have it, you have, and are doomed to spread it throughout your own garden, and every person you trade with, and fellow growers in your area...
Just look what canna virus has done!
The industry can't even find virus free stick to tissue culture, dire indeed!
I use a swipe of alcohol on my tools between cuts/digging, it cuts down on transmission...
I only had issue with it at the end of summer 2013, eliminated the 3 affected plants and that was that.
Most all bulbs froze that winter, so for all I know, I had more of it hiding!
Mosaic is a bad one, not to be played around with, as kid a kid I watched it decimated entire fields of tabacco, you could watch it spread slowly until the leaves of each plant began touching at the end of summer, by mid fall it would be rampant! Infecting every plant! Even transmitting to, and in future years, from the tomatoes...
Last summer (2014)I spotted at Kroger a shipment of what appeared to be some new variagated colocasia, big plants, I parked and walked up... Made it about 10' from the plants and realized they were absolutely eat up with virus!
I stopped so fast I bet I left skid marks!
They were just plain green C. Esculent a, with mosaic running down nearly every vein, it was stunning really, patterns you can't find anywhere in the plant world, atleast not the healthy plant world...
I didn't bother to inform the store, I just steered clear, but they eventually disappeared, I assume they were sold to folks in my area, my only solice is that most people likely killed the plants anyway.
I also remember someone from a board in the UK, they were quite excited to kind a new cultivar growing in there garden, they couldn't account from where it came, in short, same story, his colo was virused up and looked wicked!
If I recall, he opted to keep the plant anyway.
I have read about the aspirin treatment here from lariann, I can't justify it, too risky as a treatment, only useful as a preventative, atleast in my eyes.
I don't even pain over the decision to burn a few plants, it's callous but the needs of the many outweighs the few!
The 3 plants that I've trashed over it were easily replaced, but I've no doubt given half a chance, the mosaic would move into some of the irreplaceable ones.
I would love to know why the usda refuses to confirm its presence in the states, if an amateur gardener in Kentucky has issues with this, I can only imagine how prevalent it must be in say... Florida!
