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Powdery mildew look on my Delphiniums.

Nicola BalfourNicola Balfour Posts: 13
edited July 2020 in Problem solving
Hi everyone, can anyone give me some advice and tell me why there is powdery, crinkled look all over my Delphiniums both on the leaves and flowers.  Many thanks. 

Posts

  • JacquimcmahonJacquimcmahon Posts: 1,039
    It looks like rain damage, did they happen to get really wet then dry quickly? This happened to a lot of my flowers last year when we had torrential rain and sweltering sun in the same day, looked like bleach had spotted all the petals.
    Marne la vallée, basically just outside Paris 🇫🇷, but definitely Scottish at heart.
  • PosyPosy Posts: 3,601
    No, you do have powdery mildew there. A number of my plants are badly affected this year. It happens during very dry weather. When you water the plant from above, more spores splash up and make it worse. The trick is to water at the base, apparently, or stand a container in water, but I just haven't had time for all that effort. Some plants get it worse than others but most recover. I think that if you can avoid the plants getting too dry in the first place it won't happen but we have our third year of severe drought here and just keeping them alive is an achievement.
  • Nicola BalfourNicola Balfour Posts: 13
    Many thanks to both of you for your help. Hope you have a good day. X 
  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    Don’t worry too much about it, it happens, the flowers will be dying off soon anyway, just cut the stalks back to the ground, they’ll be fine I’m sure. 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

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