Forum for Plant Disorders, Diseases and Viruses?

And maybe bugs too?

Would something like this help anyone else? I just spent quite some time searching DG for information on Black Spot, and not only is the information all over the place, but it's hard to find.

I am lucky though, that I knew what I was looking for. If you had something going on with your plants, and didn't know what it was, you would only have one forum to search through to try to figure out what was wrong with it.

I think it would help to find some information if it was all in one forum.

Yep, include those insects!!! Maybe it could be an ID This for me type of forum.

Didja try Garden Foes?

Also, Garden Terms *could* (and should) become an excellent, permanent repository of pest and disease information. It is easy to add photos of the pest or disease, as well as information on how to prevent or halt its spread.

Yep, Garden Foes is mostly about the bugs and rodents. That's why I didn't include it in the title of this thread, but suggested it in the post.

Hmmm..Garden Terms. I'll go check that out.

I looked up Black Spot in Garden Terms. It does have a definition, but not any helpful information as to how others have dealt with it, and what has worked.

But....I can take a photo of it and put it in there. :)

I can see how Garden Terms would be very helpful if people would add their information in there, and if you already knew what the problem was you were trying to fix. How would you find it in Garden Terms if you didn't know what it was?

I think that would be an excellent idea Joan--I had to dmail Paulwhwest about blackspot on a possumhaw holly--which he gave me excellent advice on. But I had no idea how to treat a holly as opposed to a rose or something I was more familiar with. At least I had a good idea who to ask for a Texas problem; but felt bad about imposing on his time (although he was super gracious about helping me!) and newer members might not know who or where to turn.

Joan we posted at the same time--its kinda like trying to look a word up in the dictionary if you don't know how to spell it (which used to be a big problem for me before spellcheck).
Debbie

This message was edited Jul 15, 2006 8:39 PM

Adding info to Garden Terms is on my to do list....and images of diseases would be a great place to start...but if you are a newbie and don't know Black Spot from Fusarium...how do you search for it?

There needs to be some kind of drop down list with the type of plant that you are trying to diagnose...then you can scroll through the list of ailments specific to that plant...obviously you wouldn't need to have Fusarium on the list if you were looking at rose diseases, but a newbie wouldn't have a clue as to where to start.

Am I making any sense..or is it even more confusing?

Yep, making perfect sense Mel. If you don't know what your problem is, you wouldn't know what to search for. That's exactly my point. A drop-down for each plant would be a great idea too.

I will try to work on Garden Terms too. I had forgotten about it until now. I did just go out and take some photos of Black Spot to add. Unfortunately, I do have the plants to take those photos. :(

I think this is a great idea Joan. I have a hard time diagnosing what's going on with some of my plants and it seems I get the best information having discussions with other gardeners. A lot of times when searching the internet I get too much useless information and it seems like pictures and descriptions never match exactly what I have.

Jennifer

Yeah, we've looked at creating a pests & diseases database before, but the problem has been two-fold: 1) do we have the expertise to create it (it's a little more technically demanding than even PlantFiles) and, 2) as Mel alluded to, you have to know what you have in order to look it up.

Creating some type of drop-down list of common descriptions.....hmmmm. That's an interesting idea - IF we could come up with very succinct descriptors it might work.

The thing is,we need a spot where someone can actually see an image of damp off...or whatever. And Garden Terms is good to a point...but so many don't have a clue as to what they are looking for.

Every spring we get newbies shedding tears for their little seedlings that suddenly fell over and died. Lots of folks have never seen an aphid..(and there are many species) There are black ones, red ones and green ones in my garden and even though they may look a bit different from each other...I still know that they are aphids...some folks may not

I was fortunate to have been born in a rural area with several generations of gardeners and concientious stewards of the land in my immediate family...it's genetic for me....comes naturally. I've been blessed with a 'silver trowel' placed in my hand at birth. What is instinct to me, is like learning Sanskrit to someone who wasn't raised around it.

Well, I may have just discovered another drawback to posting too much information in Garden Terms. You must be limited as to how long your post can be? I typed in most of what I learned in my search, and then posted a photo, but the post got cut off part way through. Most of it isn't there, more than half. What's not there is how to control it.
http://davesgarden.com/terms/go/1253.html

Drop downs with plant families,

then drop downs with choices for foliage, insects, friut problems, bloom problems,

Under foliage, choices for wilt, color change, spots, mis-shapen leaves....

Insects can have.. leaf eaters, leaf suckers, borers, ...an that one can be tricky ,because you don't see a squash vine borer till it's too late

Fruits can be...failure to set..falling off, mis-shapen, rotted spots,

Blooms can be ...failure to open, mis-shapen, falling off, spots

Just a few suggestions off the top of my head...

I have more photos of diseases, I just gotta find them.

Hey this sounds great. I think I am the one in the county where I live who has the county extension agent on speed dial. If this happens, I will have to notify him, so he won't think I died!!

I figured out how to fix my partial entry in Garden Terms. :) I guess it doesn't limit the size of your post after all.

Did you have some stray html in there? That and/or double quote marks can sometimes mess up a Garden Terms entry.

Well, I'm not sure what the problem was, but from your post I think it may have been the " that I used for inch when I was talking about the diameter of the spots. That's where it quit posting. However, I could go in later and finish it and it all posted the second time, with the ".

yep - double quotes throw Garden Terms for a loop, but I *think* you can edit the entry and re-add the double quote and the text that follows without any problem.) Maybe it's a little bug that Dave can fix.

Yep, that's what I did, re-entered the double quotes and finished typing in the rest of the story. Then it took it all just fine.

I'll try to remember to nudge Dave about that one. Since there hasn't been a lot of activity in there, I haven't made that fix a priority for him

I'm guessing that once I found the work-around solution, I just got used to the quirkiness of it ;o)

I have plumeria rust. Anyone know what will treat it? AND where to get it. Help :)

I'd try the plumeria forum.

So many gardeners, especially new gardeners, don't know if damage they are seeing is from an insect or a disease - or cultural. I still think posting within the forum - such as the plumeria question - or going to plant foes - which includes insects and diseases - is the best method. Otherwise I feel that it will get so strung out that one won't know where to go for help!!!

I'm going nuts trying to figure out what's wrong with my previously healthy potato plants. It could be a bug. It could be a disease. It could be environmental. It could be a soil deficiency. I simply don't even know where to begin looking. It would be nice to have a database where I could look under potato, then under leaves, then keep clicking until I'd narrowed it down.

Did that make sense? Maybe I'm not even posting in the right thread. I'm such a newbie!

A "decision tree" feature like that would be nice, but it takes a very powerful database and a lot of highly detailed, specific data to work properly.

Esentially, it attempts to emulate the analytical process a human must go through to rule out the numerous possible reasons for a problem, and settle upon a single diagnosis.

Flow-Charting, a process for troubleshooting, has been around for awhile and works very well for electronics - It would be very interesting too see how it would work in a garden foes application.

Have you ever gone to a garden book when you had a problem, and tried to pin it down? So frustrating! The description is never just quite right and the photo doesn't look like your problem. Is it this one, or is it that one? When I took my MG classes and returned home after Plant Pathology, I was so excited! I went into my yard expecting to be able to tell what was wrong with everything. Well, it didn't happen. It took hands-on experience, coupled with lots of mentoring, and several years experience to be certain when I gave my diagnosis. And to recognize when I didn't know the answer. There are still problems that I haven't seen or know about that just may pop up and I will start from scratch, using diagnostic aids and more mentoring. It is just not that clear cut, I am afraid.

And what will you give for the solution? Those are dangerous waters.....

If some People are confused by the name Plant Foes and perceive it to mean only insects, then perhaps a change of name to Plant Problems would be the solution.

White_Hydrangea. - I would take your question to the Vegetable Gardening forum or Plant Foes forum. Those folks have probably encountered your problem.

I've actually had pretty good luck with a book published by University of California called "Pests of Landscape Trees and Shrubs". It has listings for most plants commonly found out here, and for each plant it lists the pests/diseases that it tends to be susceptible to along with descriptions of the symptoms when that plant is affected by a particular disease/bug. Since it has it broken down by things that specifically affect that particular plant, I've found it's much more useful than a general "here's a picture of the damage from xxx disease/bug". Then once you've narrowed it down to a couple of options, you can go to another section of the book where it talks about the particular pest/disease, how to prevent it, pictures, etc. I was inspired to buy it when I took a piece of my dying Toyon tree to UC Berkeley Bot. Garden's sick plant clinic and saw the volunteers there using it to help diagnose people's problems (and they correctly diagnosed the Toyon). I don't know if there are books like this that cover plants outside of California or perennials instead of just trees/shrubs but I've found this one to be extremely valuable. Obviously no substitute for years of experience, but a great place to start!

Yep. I have a library full of books like that which I have gathered over the years. All the way from "The Southern Living Garden Book" to Cynthia Westcotts' "Plant Disease Handbook" - an oldie (1971) but goodie. Two of my favorites are "Diseases of Trees and Shrubs" and "Insects that Feed on Trees and Shrubs", both published by Cornell University. But that is only part of the diagnostic process. There are lots of questions to be answered in order to know what you are dealing with. Example: wilting leaves. There are so many possibilities that you cannot possibly diagnose this symptom without asking lots of questions first. It is so frustrating when you see this on a forum or hear it on the radio and the answer is: water more. It could be due to too much water! Or nematodes. There are many reasons leaves wilt.
The good thing about DG is that with many people participating, some very wrong answers can be corrected, hopefully before any damage is done. More hopefully without any hurt feelings...
I still think that "Plant Problems" would solve the confusion. It is one thing to ID an insect, another to know if anything needs to be done about it. I think it is harder to diagnose disease or cultural problems - that takes some background and/or experience.