On Sun, 31 May 2009, Bob Hobden wrote

"Kate Brown" wrote

I've just uploaded some garden photos at
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mehitabel.snaps

It's a very ordinary South London back garden, nothing exotic and full of
mistakes, but we are fond of it and if the wind weren't blowing quite so
hard I'd be out there now reading the paper, sniffing the extraordinarily
fragrant climbing hydrangeas and listening to the mad birds.

There's another album there too called 'what's wrong? and I would be
extremely grateful if someone could give me a hint as to what might be
going wrong here - I wondered if it was too much hard water, but you've
all reassured me on that. On various plants, unrelated to each other as
far as I know, we're getting a kind of leaf shrivelling - the hollyhocks
are worst, but the heuchera and small fuchsia are also bad, and it affects
some pelargoniums and some roses as well. I've attached some photos from
August of last year where the roses were affected, though as they've come
back unaffected as yet this year, I don't know whether it's all related or
not.

There's also a problem with some roses where something is nibbling at the
leaf stem and breaking it off, but I can't see anything and they have been
well and truly sprayed.


"and they have been well and truly sprayed." What with Kate?
I ask because it looks like a problem caused by chemicals spraying onto the
leaves. With the Holyhocks I suspected Rust but there is no sign in the
photo and It looks like all the plants are suffering from the same problem
which suggests a chemical/pollution cause.


Oh dear. It would be Roseclear3, I think. Though it's only the roses
that have been sprayed as such, I suppose the other plants could have
been inadvertently sprayed as well. We did have an absolute infestation
of green and blackfly earlier in the year, and were worried when we went
away in early May that there would be nothing left when we came back. I
didn't think it could cause that much damage - it's at the proper
dilution. Indeed, there are still green and blackfly about!


--
Kate B

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