DIAGNOSTICS AND TROUBLE SHOOTING

I have stated over and over my mission with the blog/garden.  Some understand, some do not... Some readers make an effort, others can not. For those who do, this is for you.

Too many practitioners of horticulture seem to be hypnotized by flowers, bulbs, bromeliads, new items from nurseries in season or orchids to name a few.  All I see in their production is a maze of overwhelming wordy and subjective
descriptions of the animistic/hollystic kind, with certain over killing photos of this or that, with beauty as the only object of the work.

I moved away from that school. I got worn out. What is pertinent, is what your garden does for the rest of the flora/fauna around you.  

I created Caribbean Botanical Review, for this reason. To be able to  to address issues that  matter to me an a few serious gardeners. If you want to get deeper into the tittle here, move there after I finish here.

I relocated a variegated Crinum asiaticum a pink Plumeria a week ago, after monitoring and discovering signs of disease on the leaves.

Both were in the south garden grounds,  now in pots.  Vegetation patients are better observed close by, just as sick people in similar situations. The web search indicated a fungus was the probable culprit for the Crinum malady, but I found otherwise.


Today, I started to observe carefully the edges of leaves that were  cut close to the trunk.  There was a dark brown, sick looking pattern in some of these.

I decided to cut some more, and Eureka, there it was, one caterpillar/maggot. It was light brown, perhaps an inch long, located deep into the leaf base. 

I did some more cutting, getting rid of some edges with similar aspect and spraying later with Antigonum's Miracle Insect Pesticide.


Moral of the story? Anyjuan can dig a hole, plant whatever, take pretty pictures with the adequate camera, and seem  cool to the unnititiated.  Gardening is not photography and vice versa.


Let the record show that plants in general are very much like us. They have dermis, epidermis, get bacterial, viruses, fungi disease, just like us.  On top of that, some vectors causing damage to plants,  also make our life miserable with diseases, not always easy to diagnose.


In brief, knowing the botanical names of your installation and monitoring for disease will make your garden something rare, unique, easier to handle, but nothing is better than the empirical way. Scissors and searching for the culprits, with the pertinent medication.

That is that...apaga i vamonoh...

Find out the most recent member inducted in the over ONE HUNDRED COLLECTION  in Caribbean Botanical Review, not a scholastic or pedantic product from your servant 

the most humble of the bloggers down this Caribbean concrete/asphalted platform isle.