Oh no that sucks. An all day job??

What do you know about the virus? Shouldn't you just take any bulb with the blight on it and throw it away?

I'm sorry for your loss.

Are you sure it's a virus? I thought my mint had a horrible virus - it looks like black spot on roses, but it showed up first on the mint. Then it started spreading to my other plants and I was terrified but I took some leaves to the good garden center and they said that no, not a virus, but an infestation of aphids. Which I am currently battling with neem oil.

Yeah, cannas are my favorite flower. So I have huge areas of them in both my front and back yard. I dug up all areas that had some signs of the bad virus, left the others alone. Took hours and hours. I am typing up a post to a canna mailing list I never bother to read (where this has probably been discussed to death had I actually read the damn list) asking for advice and I am going to include pictures of the canna leaves.

There are two viruses. One is a mosaic virus. Causes streaking in the leaves that look almost like they are variegated and also causes lighter streaks in flowers, etc. Not terrible but I have noticed many of the blooms are not as bright or bold as they should be.

The other is called canna yellow mottle virus or something like that and the plants that appeared to have it looked horrible. From what I have read, aphids or other critters spread it by eating on one plant and then eating on another. So by now with all the aphids around, every canna I have could have it. I am destroying the obvious ones and hoping for the best. Apparently this one guy in the UK that had a huge collection of cannas (I used to visit his page frequently, it is here) destroyed all of his cannas because of these stupid viruses.

I most likely got it last spring when I bought some cannas at Wal-Mart or Lowe's, as apparently in the last few years it has become so widespread that you are very likely to get one or both of these viruses if you buy plants anywhere except for serious Canna retailers that are actively trying to keep clean stock.

Oh ick, weretable. That sucks.

Now that I've got the hardcore veg garden going this year, I've become paranoid about tobacco mosaic virus and verticillium. This will add to my neuroses.

≡ Click to see image ≡

Some of my cannas that have the lesser of the two evils. They are not nearly as vibrant as they have been previously but at least they do not look like this.


Oh and here is a very small part of my front yard that I took while I was photographing the cannas. Since I thought the cannas in the background might be gone soon. Bleh.

Your yard is quite beautiful, weretable. Sorry to hear about the virus.

Wow, I love your yard! I'm sorry to hear about the cannas, though.

What about investing in some praying mantis'? They'd chow down on aphids I think. And ladybugs would too.

That's a great idea. Ordering praying mantis through the mail is a trip...you get 500 of them in a little tiny box.

Your grasses are beautiful. I've been looking into different types of grasses to fill in some areas at the back of my beds.