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Hippeastrum papilio, step 2
May. 12th, 2014 10:30 amThe orange blotches on my Hippeastrum papilio were very ugly. They may be a relatively treatable orange blotch, or they may be the dreaded Stagonosporus curtisii.Treatment for the latter is iffy at best, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. A couple days ago I cut off the foliage and allowed the wounds to heal for a couple days. Yesterday I pulled them from the pots , washed off the soil, and teased apart the roots -- a bit like dealing with yarn after that cat has been at it. All this on my front stoop, wearing rubber gloves. I wanted all the contaminated stuff out of the house.
Now they're drying in a room in which I never have plants of any description -- no light. (It's the office supply / file room on the third floor.) In a day or so I'll start the process of decontaminating them. Fungicide first, because spores. That's also the easier thing, I think. Fill a basin with the Thiomyl suspension in 85F water. They need to stay in it for an hour, so I'll shove the basin in the oven. The pilot light keeps the oven at a pleasant 90F, which is close enough for rock and roll.
After that, they get a 2 to 3 hour treatment at 104F-114F to kill any of the tarsenomid mites that may infest them.
DISCLAIMER: I've never done this before for this fungus. I heat-treated a bunch of hippeastrum in 2011 as a general prophylactic but that was only for an hour. This is all new territory for me.
( Some photos now. )
So why am I doing all this? Because I'm damned if I'm going to let a fungus get the better of me. Also, the Telos bulbs were expensive and I don't like to spend money on plants, so jeebus. Also, H. papilio are notoriously difficult to raise and to bring into bloom, so they're a challenge. But mostly because I don't buy plants; I adopt them and I'm not letting them go without a struggle. As a reminder, this is the payoff (assuming they ever bloom again). This is the bulb Val gave me -- you can see the new plants coming out of the bulb:
In retrospect, I should have seen in that one twisted leaf the signs of trouble ahead, but I thought it was just trauma from shipping.
Now they're drying in a room in which I never have plants of any description -- no light. (It's the office supply / file room on the third floor.) In a day or so I'll start the process of decontaminating them. Fungicide first, because spores. That's also the easier thing, I think. Fill a basin with the Thiomyl suspension in 85F water. They need to stay in it for an hour, so I'll shove the basin in the oven. The pilot light keeps the oven at a pleasant 90F, which is close enough for rock and roll.
After that, they get a 2 to 3 hour treatment at 104F-114F to kill any of the tarsenomid mites that may infest them.
DISCLAIMER: I've never done this before for this fungus. I heat-treated a bunch of hippeastrum in 2011 as a general prophylactic but that was only for an hour. This is all new territory for me.
( Some photos now. )
So why am I doing all this? Because I'm damned if I'm going to let a fungus get the better of me. Also, the Telos bulbs were expensive and I don't like to spend money on plants, so jeebus. Also, H. papilio are notoriously difficult to raise and to bring into bloom, so they're a challenge. But mostly because I don't buy plants; I adopt them and I'm not letting them go without a struggle. As a reminder, this is the payoff (assuming they ever bloom again). This is the bulb Val gave me -- you can see the new plants coming out of the bulb:
In retrospect, I should have seen in that one twisted leaf the signs of trouble ahead, but I thought it was just trauma from shipping.
