Mold On Azalea Update | Organic Gardening How To
Last November, I wrote an Organic Gardening How To Blog article that I need to make a correction on. That
article was called Mold On Azalea Stems – Organic Garden Pest Control.
In that article, I reported that I had learned that “mold” that I had seen growing on some our azalea plants was Sooty Mold and all I had to do to control it was to do a better job controlling some of the insects in our organic garden.
Well, Sooty Mold can certainly be a problem that you might need to control in your garden, but after vigorously trying to control insects in our garden and the problem persisted, I figured the author of this Organic Gardening How To Blog needed to do something different.
So, last week I cut a branch off one of my azalea plants that had this “mold” on it and I took it to a field office of the Clemson University’s agricultural department… this office was about 30 miles away.
A professor there immediately identified my “mold” problem as that of being lichen (which is actually an organism…fascinating, huh). He told me that the lichen was harmless to the azaleas, but the fact that I had lichen on the azaleas was an indication that the plant was not healthy…something was wrong with the plant’s health.
The professor could not tell me exactly what was wrong with the health of the plants, but he suggested that I get a pH testing kit
He also suggested that I prune and fertilize the plants with an organic fertilizer
These are now the things that I’m working on in an attempt to save our precious azaleas.
There is an important lesson learned here… if you have problems in your organic garden and you’re not sure how to correct those problems, seek out the help of other professionals. Many colleges and universities have field offices that can help you… for little or no charge.
I want to say “Thanks” to Clemson University for the help they gave me… and I’m not even a graduate of that University!
That’s it for now from the Organic Gardening How To Blog…