These asters produced bunches of buds, but when it came time to bloom, they started turning brown -- I got a few flowers, but the plants look dry and almost dead. I picked off lots of little green caterpillar-like worms, (inchworm-looking things), but I'm not so sure they were the culprits -- I pulled one plant up, and the root system looked good -- new growth, no sign of fungus...
Any ideas???
Could it be lack of water? Mine lost their lower leaves and the blooms started drying up before I realized what was happening. I watered them good and they bloomed.
This message was edited Oct 22, 2007 8:19 PM
Looks more like a watering issue or possibly a fungal problem rather than insect damage to me.
I call it aster browns. I have one that turns brown when you water it then recovers, turns green and blooms. but the brown i have is dried up dead looking brown. i had another one also but it didn't make it through the winter. I think if i pinched some of the blooms off that it would have the nice big blooms it had last fall when i bought it at the nursery, but that's a lot of pinching.
