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Poinsettia Fungicide: Prevent Defense
By admin | September 6, 2007
Our poinsettia crop will receive their second preventative fungicide drench tomorrow and this is the application that we tend to struggle to successfully apply. In previous seasons, our poinsettias tend to start showing signs of root rot after the second fungicide drench. I concluded last year that several factors cause this outbreak of pythium but most directly is our inability to thoroughly apply the chemical to the rootzone. At this time, our poinsettias are full of expanding leaves and no soil is visible but they are not spaced. This means that it can be very difficult to ensure that the drench properly reaches it’s destination. Whithin the next 10 days I will space all of our crops to their final spacing but I want to get the drench on now to save on chemical cost and application time.
Tomorrow’s success will go along way toward eliminating shrink and having a successful poinsettia season. A good preventative fungicide drench now will also help us to achieve our height specs for some of our less vigorous varieties like Premium Red. Root rot pressures tend to slow the growth and even a small amount of pythium pressure could cause big problems for our lower vigor poinsettias.
Topics: Poinsettias, IPM |
October 17th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
i know i am commenting to an old post but if you are there for fungicide prevention do you use rhapsody. just wondering because i am starting consistant preventition using biofungicides and holding off chemicle untill curitive need. i grow perennial liners
October 19th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I’ve tried Rhapsody with some success but not on poinsettia. I’ve used to mostly for bacterial leaf spot. I tend to use Milstop (potassium bicarbonate) quite a bit for Powdery Mildew and Botrytis control. You should try Botaniguard as well for pest control.