If you received AV plantlets or leaves from me....

I sent some AV plantlets to Marueen in October. They recently started looking poorly, and I was blaming it on "adjustment issues," but to double check she sent samples to the extension service. Unfortunately, the report came back positive for mites. Yikes!!!

She posted about this in another thread, but I wanted to make sure folks were aware of the problem.

It's pretty much my worst trading nightmare to think that I might have passed along a pest like this. I do check my plants regularly (with magnification), and I would not knowingly have passed on any suspect material. I know mites can come from many sources, so Maureen's may or may not have originated with my plants, but needless to say I'll be taking in samples of my own after the holidays. I'm sure you can imagine that my heart is just in my throat!

I will keep you posted on any further findings at my end. In the meantime, please continue to isolate any plants you received from me!!!

I did buy a "just in case" bottle of Avid last winter so I'd have it on hand, and as I've offered before, I'll share from that supply.

Oh, I am posting with my fingers crossed...

Good luck, critter. Oh, yikes, I'm so sorry.

Yes good luck. Jill praying all will work out.

I'm praying here too! I sure don't want to be that unpopular kid in class who gave everybody head lice.... I did have all my plants from spring trades and purchases isolated from the upstairs plants up through the time I sent the plants to Maureen, so if I have mites I have no idea where they came from. Again, nothing is verified yet on this end, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. I'll sure be busy isolating and treating over the winter if it turns out that Marueen's mites did originate here.

Oh mites can come from anywhere , inside a screen, come in when your doing outside gardening , clothes, finger nails, tools, new plants of any type, cut flowers, pets , tools, trays, they travel fast.
I'm not sure I know I would never be able to use Advid pr amy of those other products . I'm just thinking it may not be worth it.
It can be harmful to you and to your children you will have in the furture. Plants are just plants you can replace them :))
Health can not always be replaced or fixed :((

You're right, Avid is not a chemical to be used casually. If by some Christmas miracle I'm pregnant, I will not go near it. :-)

Respirator, protective clothing, goggles are all necessary precautions. Dipping plants or "painting" on the solution with a foam brush will also limit your exposure and may be safer than spraying. Read the label at least twice, and take all precautions before using any sort of pesticide!

Critter - I'm hoping your plants dont' have the mites. (And I'll take mites over lice any day!!:-) Just wanted to let you know, the cooperative extension told me they do not recommend trying to get rid of the cyclamen mites because it is very difficult to get rid of them (they hid in the cracks and crevices which usually cannot be reached easily). They told me I should dispose of the a/v's. Are you sending yours to a cooperative extension in your area?

I'm hoping I'll be able to meet with somebody at the extension service here who can show me exactly how and what to look for if he finds a problem... If my little magnifier isn't doing the job, I can get a 50X kid-quality microscope that should do the trick. If I find mites anywhere, I'll sort through my plants and check as I go to figure out which to isolate and watch, which to treat, and which to toss. I've been putting leaves down in little salad containers, so if there is a problem I'm hopeful that it won't have managed to spread through all the propagation flats. If I do find mites, and if I decide to treat with Avid, I will probably dunk leaves and smaller plants, or saturate them with solution applied with a foam brush, to be sure of treating them thoroughly. I think that should work, as long as I am careful to dry the crown afterward, just as I would when washing a plant.

I wonder if there'd be enough space between the lense and the base for you to put an av leaf through...hmmm...

Maureen- I'm sorry to hear about your plants. I'm hoping for critter's sake that they came from a store bought plant rather than from her collection.

I thought I saw a thread a long while back where someone had mites and how they got rid of theirs...let me do some searching....

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/642179/

Here we go. I remember he got rid of his, but I'd have to read through it again to see exactly how.

Jill sent me some Avid. That's how.

Cool. ; ) Well, I assume it worked since you got your centers back, right? Are they still doing great?

I also read on Rob's site(??) that they love cool temperatures- hate warm- and that if you put them in water that is 115 degrees for 15 minutes, you will kill them but it won't harm your plant. You could probably spray afterwards, too, if it'd make you feel better. It's worth a shot if you want to avoid chemicals.

CJ, that sounds like the same treatment I've read about for amaryllis mites.... that sounds like a great way to treat leaves, especially.

Want dunking av's this time of year harm them? What do you do after you submurge(sp?)Blot the leaves,put them in warmer surroundings until completely dry? Are we talking the whole plants or are we talking just leaves?

I just pulled a crown leaf from 3 different plants I suspected,pulled them apart so I could inspect and poke every suspected spot,nook and cranny and found nothing. I forget to bump the heater up at night a few times during some 25-27% nights and calculated,I'd been leaving the lights on apx 16 hrs a day.Since I've been watching heat and lights better,some of the plants w/ tight crowns are loosening up.


P

P, I've done the same and found nothing also.... but I'm still going to call the extension folks after the holidays and take in some samples...

I'm seeing buds on a bunch of plants that haven't bloomed for a while... I've boosted their fertilizer just a little bit, and I think maybe they just like the lights better in winter, LOL.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for all of us.

P

Me too... you might do the same thing with a couple of samples if you can, might as well cover all our bases.

I did just order some little glass bottles in case anybody wanted a dose of Avid... I sent some to Kenton in a plastic eyedrop bottle, but I figured a 2 dram bottle would travel fine also in a BE. Hopefully, no such measures will be needed!

Before maureen's plants I'd be the first to say might be something else. But now I say First thing send a few plants out to be checked. :))
Even from different floors or rooms, stands. Mites have many stages and even female can go dormant while waiting on male host of if its cold....
Yes it also says all plants can be affected these are just a list of plants most likly. Mites have a long life cycle and female mites may semi-hibernate in the soil until a male host becomes available. There are more females than males and they live longer also.
Their hard to get rid of. You can try to control and get rid of them.
They are harder to get rid of in winter months than warm.
Each female deposits about 90 eggs, of which 80 percent may develop into females. The mites develop through a six-legged larval stage and a dormant nymphal stage with eight legs. All stages of the mite are found on infested plants. Out-of-doors, the adult female overwinters in protected
Mites can easily be moved from infested to noninfested plants on hands and clothing, so always examine infested benches and other hot spots for symptoms of mite infestation
The best treatment is Avid . It's best two treat at least 3-4 times not counting the first treament . Even then plants need to be carefuly checked and watched.
It's not easy to treat them and can be dangerous to health and environment . Must diseases are 50 percent environment and 50 percent inherited. It amazes me a female baby is born with all her eggs.
Everything around us and what we breath, eat not only affects our health now and in the future but affects our children and grand kids too.
Many Pesticides used when I was a kid are no longer safe or legal or sold. I have learned to stay away from them as much as possible .
Precautions can be taken in handling these different PESTICIDE but known of these precautions are 100 percent fool proof ( how do they say it lol )
Life is short materials things don't mater you can't take them with you !
Kenton you did do an excellent job !
Number one thing Isolate !!

Everyone makes their own decisions regarding the use of pesticides... I certainly don't want anybody to think I'm "pushing" toxic chmicals, but I wanted to make the offer to share from my bottle if anybody did decide to use it. Even the "small" bottle is a big investment at about $100, and at 1/16 tsp per quart (my calculation from their recommended dilution rate) my 8 oz bottle will make more solution than I could ever use.

Let usknow how everything works out. Good Luck .

I will... but nothing will happen until after all my company leaves later this week! :-)

I've been more able to drive lately since getting migraines under control, so I finally got over to county extension with several boxes of plants to get checked out. The lady I worked with there is new, and her experience is more with non-houseplants, so she was looking up the same info links on cyclamen mites that we're all familiar with... but she did have a 40x dissection scope, so we tore apart several plants and examined them minutely.

Unfortunately, we did find signs that were most likely cyclamen mites on one of the downstairs plants, so I'll be tossing out some of the plants that don't look so good on my "isolation" shelves downstairs. I hadn't been examining those plants as carefully over the winter, as I was more concerned about checking over plants on the upstairs shelves where I do my propagating.

She didn't suggest sending any plants anywhere for further analysis -- since I already had Avid on hand, she figured it was best for me to just treat all my AVs with it (weekly, 3 or 4 times).

All my plants will get treated, and I'll do a lot of sorting and tossing away. If I don't have a good looking plant of a particular variety, I'll cut a few leaves to propagate (soaking them in Avid and then re-treating them along with the rest of the plants).

But I think the good news is that we didn't see any mites or signs on the plants from the upstairs shelves. New plants acquired in 2006 were all kept on the downstairs shelves until November, when a few were moved to the bottom shelf of the upstairs stand (bottom shelf "just in case," as I seem to recall an article in the AVSA magazine mentioning that mites don't readily climb up to higher shelves). So, the plantlets that I sent out last year should be "clean."

I won't be sending out plantlets this spring, because I think it's better to throw away my extras (I don't want to treat them all, and I don't want to send out untreated ones). For people who are expecting leaf boxes from me, please Dmail me and tell me what you'd like to do -- I can send leaves after a month of treatment, or I can send leaves in the fall when I've had some time to verify that the problem is gone, or we can just cancel. If you sent shipping money, please remind me, and I'll just PayPal it back to you.

I've got the Avid to use on the plants, so I think I can save the majority of my collection (at least in terms of varieties... it'll take a while before I have blooming size plants again from leaves). I'm not panicking about my plants, but I sure hope the extension agent and I are right about it being extremely unlikely that I passed any mites along. I just wanted everybody to know what was happening now on my end.

I think my mites may have come from a trade, just going by which plants started looking poorly first downstairs, but I'm not about to start pointing fingers because they could just have easily come in from outside. So I don't want anybody worrying about that.

I don't see the risk of mites as a reason not to trade... I think we are far more likely to pick up pests from plants bought at Home Depot (or even from a reputable grower) or from other plants brought in from outside than from a fellow trader. As others have said, the risk is smaller when you're trading leaves rather than plants, so that may be something to keep in mind -- although it's a lot of fun to get a pretty little plantlet from somebody!

Just remember to isolate new plants for several months!!

Thanks for letting us know Critter.I sent you a d-mail.Good luck : )
Nancy

Critter,
You have dmail from me.
Laura

I've been sorting through my collection this week, and I'm checking my schedule to find the best time to start treatment, as I want to be certain that I can retreat according to a strict 7 day schedule for 4 weeks (that's the recommended 3 treatments plus 1).

Everything that remains will be treated with Avid, but I'm tossing out lots and lots of plantlets and leaf pots and duplicate plants, plus any (fewer than you'd think LOL) that I've decided aren't definite favorites. I've pared 5 shelves worth of plants down to about 2 shelves, and some of the larger plants I'm just saving out until I can take leaves from them. The downstairs plants will occupy a third shelf upstairs after treatment begins.

Many of the plants I've kept so far are minis or small starter size plants, so 3 shelves (12 flats) is still going to be a lot of plants to treat. I may reduce the numbers further yet by restarting many varieties from leaf rather than trying to save the plant. Leaves seem to be less likely vectors, and they are easy to treat by dipping the entire leaf in Avid before I pot it up. (Leaf pots will also get retreated weekly.)

I am pretty sure that the plantlets (all on one shelf) that were in the closed vented leaf trays are uninfested.... I will treat them also, just to be certain, but I've put them on a basement light shelf so I can repot and treat them *after* dealing with the others... that makes the task less enormous. There are 50 or so varieties of miniatures represented in those trays, and that realization makes me feel a bit better. :-)

It was tempting to just start spraying everything in sight, but I know that I need to get organized, make lists of which plants stay or go or get restarted from a leaf, and really reduce the number of plants before I begin.

Jill--I'm SO sorry you are having to go through all that work and that you are losing so many of your plants. They are just plants after all, but you have put so much into them and have done a beautiful job.

I'm glad you are feeling better. Please be careful.

Diane

The bummer is that I put down all those leaves and potted all those plantlets hoping to have lots of little beauties to share around this spring -- and instead, I have this little disaster to deal with!

But as you said, they're just plants... I'm keeping things in perspective! And not to worry, I'm very careful with chemicals.

Thanks for your moral support! :-)

What a bummer, Jill, I'm so sorry.

I figure it's the kind of thing that falls under "stuff happens." I just hope nobody else found mites when they sent plants in -- and needless to say, I'm really hoping that nobody got them in a box from me! I know several people (who were not people I traded with, except for Maureen) have found mites in their AV collection in the last few months... there are so many places they can come from, and I think they probably do flourish during cooler weather, so winter seems like a likely time to see symptoms...

I'm glad I decided to take some time to get the plants sorted out and organized. I've got some trays marked "restart from leaf" and a bunch of smaller plantlets (which I think will be easier to treat)... I may try to treat a few full sized ones too, but only ones that aren't showing any symptoms and are less likely to be harboring pests. It'll be OK.

Be careful, Jill.

Of course! I've got goggles, mask, and good gloves, and clothes (full coverage) will go straight into the wash afterwards. I'm planning to do more dipping than spraying, which will also help... plants and plantlets will be uprooted, dipped, and then repotted for their first treatment (which is one reason it's quite important to downsize as much as possible before starting -- I'd never get through them, else!).

Thanks.

I know you have a massive job in front of you and you are being so faithful to complete it rather than just tossing everything into a big trash can. I appreciate all your efforts. Please keep us posted.

Diane

Sorry to hear about your mite problem. To be on the save side,I've been clearing the shelves,scrubbing and dis-infecting them. Pulling apart grown plants,checking the leaves,soaking them in Safer w/a drop of bleach,then scrubbing them with a foam brush dipped in un-diluted Safer. Plants that weren't big enough to tear down,I put in the lean-to greenhouse and set a bomb off. I've found no mites but I did find a few leaves with lil wooly boogers. They all went in the compost.

I'm picking up a cansiter of pyrethron(sp?)to go in my automatic sprayer in the lean-to,set to spray every 30 mins.

P

P, I'm sorry you're having to go to all that effort... but it's better to be safe than sorry, so I'm glad you're checking your plants. I'm relieved that you haven't found any mites! I believe yours was the only box that included anything (a couple of leaf pots) from the downstairs shelves (I'm pretty confident that the problem didn't move upstairs until last fall)... but those leaf pots had been in a closed, covered container and the plantlets from my same leaf pots (now upstairs) look fine.

I'm a little curious how you found out about them needing to be sprayed 3 times and how far apart to spray them. Is there a website somewhere that tells you that for all insects? That'd be a good thing to put in the sticky.

It's on the directions that came with the Avid. The Stevard link in the AV sticky has some good info about mites.

cj, the timing depends on the pest and the pesticide. Unfortunately, it takes a little research each time - identify pest, identify effective treatment, figure out application schedule. Some of the links in the sticky have pest info - unfortunately can't be much simpler.

Well,growing plants comes with little bumps in the road.You just learn to go with the flow.
P