Daniel--I am presently experimenting with both the bleach method and the heat one!

Unfortunately, the one I did with bleach still showed evidence of nematodes being ACTIVE
with inspection done with the floating leaf in water after an hour with a 10x jeweler's loupe!

So, I went for the hot bath. The water from our hot water tank heats to 125 degrees when let run
a sink full! I did not remove the leaves but thought they should also be dunked to kill whatever
neems there were in the whole plant. I let them sit 10-15 mins. continually testing the water temp
and adding more heat when necessary.

The hosta came out looking none the worse for the scalding but, of course, in time began to wilt and
get like parchment. Any observation I made with the above described method has shown no neem activity.

All treated hosta are presently sitting in 'hosta hell' which is our front driveway in as much sun as
is possible to be exposed to in our yard!!

Hopefully, 'they will see the light' and the 'foliar neems will repent and have opportunity to
expire either for a better place or just 'poof' and be gone!!!

I'll keep you posted, and let you know about next year and the results of this measure taken!! :o)

Seems they hardly realize where they have landed--yet!!

Okay--some seem to have caught on to their new *reality* but 'Sweet Home Chicago' seems unfazed by his ETERNITY! Okay,
maybe--unlike the real HELL, he'll get a chance to make amends but he really needs to show some regret and respect for his
predicament and *sulk* at least a bit!

'JCC' on far left is showing some strong results! I pulled some of the leaves off of each plant
but SWH and the crown is mushy on it! The others just show some pips poking up looking fine,
I think! *Time* will tell!!

Reporting LIVE from the edge of ETERNITY this is your 'neem-a-tode' reporter signing off....on
this experiment for the day!!! :o)

janice/hey-j

Hey Janice!

Unfortunately, the one I did with bleach still showed evidence of nematodes being ACTIVE with inspection done with the floating leaf in water after an hour with a 10x jeweler's loupe

If you check the thread back 2 years where Bruce Banyai piped in -see below- you will see he recommends leaving the crown-root be left in the 10% bleach solution overnight. How long did you leave them in? He also recommended cutting off all the leaves.... I rather suspect the killing effect of the bleach is much greater without the leaves than with the leaves still on. Without the leaves the bleach can get into the crown and roots much quicker and much deeper I would think, trying to save an infected leaf was not on his agenda.

Pieter

Here is a link that might be useful: Older foliar nematode thread....

hmmm, Pieter--something to consider! I had just figured better to kill the neems all over the plant
and I did leave it overnight--I think(?)! I recall trying to do what you had said to do--with the
exception of removing the leaves! I think I may have actually used a stronger bleach ratio
than suggested. My brew was 1 pt. bleach to 9 pts. water!

I also, *reasoned*, I could check for activity if I allowed the leaves to experience what the whole
plant was going through!

I appreciate your thorough documentation and your willingness to share with us your efforts!

We HAVE TO keep trying something don't we!!!

I was wonder,again,if you could leave the hosta in the ground,cover the whole plant with a black garbage bag,and leave it for the remainder of the year,would that do any thing?
I do not have neems, so i can not do the experiment,just a thought????Would it get hot enough in the bag to kill the neems??
cAROL

I just read somewhere to leave the potted plant in a hot car for a couple of hours. I forget where I read it though - lol - oldtimers disease.
Pam

I also tried the bleach solution and I left the plants in to soak overnight. I followed the steps that Bruce Banyai recommended , stripped mnost of the leaves off, cleaned out all the soil, everything. I now have mushy roots on ALL the plants I treated. They are goners.

My consolation is that I tried and they would have died anyway, even if I did nothing. But it was a lot of work for nothing!

I am now trying the Dr. Bronner's soap and mouthwash spray once a week to try to protect the other plants because I don't know what else to do.

christine

I'm interested in the Dr. Bronner's Soap and Mouthwash Spray and have seen other threads about it. It would be interesting to see if an infected plant would benefit from being soaked in it for 5 - 10 minutes. Could osmosis be the way that the solution gets to the nematodes?
Daniel

If your roots turned to mush in bleach solution, several questions:

1.were the roots overall healthy and firm before? Not rotten? I cut off any rotten, broken or diseased roots before bleaching, cutting down to healthy firm white tissue in the crown.

2.did you use cold water and keep them out of the sun?

3. how long did they soak for?

4. strength of bleach solution?

I have seen hosta roots that were already starting to rot (may have red cores in the roots or red/orange tissue - diseased from fungal attack) which will turn to mush. Also hot/warm water and too high strength bleach will do it.

Have not seen it with healthy roots and cold water. Have left them in bleach water for 12+ hours without problems. Wouldn't leave them any longer though - generally overnight.
Bruce Banyai

To answer your questions,

1- yes, all roots were healthy, I cut off the bad ones.

2- Well....I did use cold water, but they did get some late afternoon sun

3- They were in soak for probably longer than they should have been, considering your question. Probably closer to 18 hours.

4- The bleach solution was somewhere between 10-15%

Looks like I might have not gotten everything right! My bad.

christine

Daniel,

I don't know it that would work or not. I no longer have any plants in the garden that have signs of nematodes. I am planning on using the solution as discussed in the old thread that has been brought forward here. I am going to use it weekly to spray all the plants and soak the soil around the plant and see what happens. And pull off any diseased leaves as Kines suggested.

christine

Well, I can say for a fact that Merit Granules does not work.

I even went as far as putting over an inch of the stuff on top and around the crown of one of the most infested plant and every other day I still pick off bad leafs. (or is it leaves?)

I think I've tried every method that has been mentioned on the forum.

Last night I ordered a gal jug of Neem Oil from ebay. I'm gonna give that a try next.

The experiment that I did in 2007 with the bleach/water overnight bath does look promising. No nematode damage so far. Oh, but what a hassle that was!

Sassy, please let us know how it works. So far I haven't found signs on any of my other plants, hope springs eternal!

But if there is something else that works, I would like to add it to my arsenal.

christine

Daniel,
I am with you, I am also looking for a spray method.
I invested a little money and work this year into my hostas and would like to know a spray I can use for prevention. Digging out hostas after just planting them, then rinsing, hot bath and/or chlorine seems to be too much for me. I would rather buy a new plant.
(I am looking for a simple procedure similar to using Bug-Geta from Ortho in respect to fight slugs. I am using that and just saw many slugs dead next to my hostas)

Donna ('playinmud') and Von ('von1') in that August 2007 thread had success with sprays, which seem to require much less effort from people and is much less intrusive on plants, and has acceptable though not 100% results. But possibly requiring 100% results is overkill, and picking off an infected leave once a while should be acceptable. This is like accepting a few holes from slugs and occasional hail.

I read Kines' 'My Personal Observation', had some time today and went to a very good nursery in my area, and there was a H.'Liberty' with puffed up interveinal areas. A big box store had it on some of their hostas. I had bought hostas from both places, and my hostas show similarly, though no browned areas yet. So, I am thinking to add some prevention.

One spray in the 2007 thread was with insecticidal soap plus cigar juice, the other one with molasses and a beer (sounds good!). I will buy more hostas in a few days and will need defenses against a possible invasion by nematodes.

To repeat Daniel, do some forum members (besides Donna and Von) have successful experience with anti-nematode sprays?

Donna and Von, does your success with sprays continue?

Thanks,
Bernd

Bernd, I suspect that the best you can expect from anything in a spray is control - to some extent. If you're happy with control, go for it. Personally I looked for elimination, that's why I took the bleach approach.

I found myself in a position where I could still very easily keep the plants that showed the manifestation isolated and wanted to try and eradicate the infestation. I could easily have tossed the plants, they didn't cost me anything other than the postage to be part of the secret trade. While I only observed symptoms in 4 or 5 of the 8 varieties I received at the time, they all shared the same water bath upon receipt and it became a case of I've got nothing to loose and everything to gain. Gain in terms of knowledge and experience as well as the plants themselves, which I did on both accounts. The fact I could do the procedure using things I had on hand already anyway was an added bonus, no self-respecting Dutchman passes up an opportunity to save some money.

I have 7 of the 8 varieties left and all are growing, some better than others, and into their 3rd year now none are showing any symptoms. One of them has been transplanted from the container it was in to the garden back in April and seems to be settling down without any signs of a returning infestation. By the same token, I'll keep an eagle eye on this puppy for the next few years. Just because things are pointing in the right direction doesn't mean I'm letting down my guard. All I really have done with the bleach bath is to kill the living worms, it won't have had any impact on whatever there may have been in terms of eggs. Who knows, I may be repeating the procedure in another 2 years, but for the time being I'm cautiously optimistic I appear to have licked this.

If you are buying more Hosta over the next few days, if you have any doubts at all about them with regard to foliar nematodes and you feel you just have to have those plants, why not keep them potted up and in isolation. Should there prove to be an issue at least you won't have taken a chance with exposing the rest of the garden to a worm that overwinters in the soil and spreads from there.

Yes, the bleach bath is a lot more work, it's hard on the plants as well and will set them back hard. But at least you know it'll work if you follow Bruce's outline.

I hope you will never find yourself wondering if the dessication you're seeing on a leaf might just be the dreaded foliar nematodes. But if you do I suggest you go at them with guns blazing rather than take a fly swatter.

Pieter.

Pieter,
thank you for your reply. Your postings are always very informative, and I believe that your approach to nematodes is very knowledgeable and successful. For me it would be another dimension to do it on established plants. I know that your and Bruce's method via bleach and/or hot baths are there in case I get a real infestation.

On second thoughts, any new hostas I will buy I should rinse off the soil and give them a short bleach bath as precaution and plant them in isolated spots this year, also to let them develop more eyes before finding a final spot.
Thanks!
Bernd

Sadly, I have found foliar nematodes developed on a new hosta that I bought earlier this summer. It started small in one leaf and slowly spread between the veins in the typical fashion observed in some of hey_j's postings here. Thanks to her I knew what I was dealing with quickly.

I have removed the hosta from the holding bed, cut off the foliage (it is a very young All That Jazz with only two leaves and one node at the base of one stem and large roots) and soaked it for 8 hours in a 10% bleach solution. There was some softening of the stem at the top 1/2" after the soaking the hosta received, I cut that off to the more firm piece of stem below it. Rinsed it off and have it potted up in quarantine now.

What recommendations (if any) do you have for treating the soil in the holding bed?

Thanks!
Tracy

Tracy, Now you will need to pour boiling water into the empty hole plus on the soil all around the hole.
Be careful. I find it's the worse part of doing the heat treatment.
Carrying large pans of scalding water out to the garden is so dangerous.
Someone suggested that I use one of those camper stoves that run on white gas or propane bottles and boil the water outside near the garden.
That does help, but I have to pick a day that's not too windy.

Sassy, that is a great idea. I have my gas grill with side burner very close to that bed. I will boil water there and it is only about 10 feet away. Thanky you for the great tip!

I seem to believe now that it is not such a good idea to give a 10% bleach (10% of a 10% solution from a bottle) bath for a baby hosta newcomer to safeguard against any nematodes. I gave a 1 hour bath to two Dancing in the Rain youngsters, and they have now shriveling and drying up leaves. :( . I was really looking forward seeing them grow up and become really big ones.
After that experience, I will plant new ones as they are, and check with them next year again. Ken might have suggested that recently.
I bought Bayer Rose and Flower Care, 2 in 1 Systemic plus fertilizer, is against leaf miners, was suggested to me against nematodes by a hosta gardener, will use that next spring.
Bernd

Bernd, the recommendation Bruce Banyai gave for a 10% solution is based on the assumption you'd be using regular household bleach, which is a hypochlorite solution of between 3.85% and 5.75%, the low end are the bargain brands (now you know why they're cheaper) and the upper figure is for the brand names. If you have found a bleach that is a 10% hypochlorite solution, then if you dilute that 1 part to 9 you effectively get double the strength of what you'd get with the normal household bleach.

So, two questions:
1. are you sure it was a 10% hypochlorite solution, as per its label and
2. did you keep the plants and plant them?

The loss of leaves is to be expected, but if the crowns were not mushy after the one hour bath I'd be looking for evidence of new shoots emerging in 10-14 days, so all will not be lost.

Foliar nematode infestation starts to become evident round about the end of July or a little later, depending on exactly where you are. I make it a habit now, having gone through a 'wormy episode' in 2007, that any new plants I bring in, be they purchases or trades, are all kept aside, potted up and in an area where there is no chance of overhead water being an issue, it's a covered breezeway. Watering is done by hand, with water from my rainbarrels with a Haws watering can, using no form of nozzle and they're watered directly in the top of the pot. Once they've been there for a year and I'm quite confident there isn't an FN issue, they will be put into the 'regular' collection. That could either be a much larger container or a spot in one of our raised planters.

Pieter

I just posted this on the thread about Dr. Bonners soap. It seems hopeful to me. We'll see what happens later on this summer.

I've been trying the soap/mouthwash treatment for 3 years. As I posted on another thread (?) it appeared semi-successful. The nematodes were not spreading to other plants. During the last 2 summer I just picked off the leaves as they showed up the damage. The damage also didn't seem to increase the next year. Some of them seemed actually better.
This year I realized that spraying with a spray bottle down into the plants was fine but over the course of a summer (treating maybe a dozen plants) I refilled the spray bottle only two or three times. One small liter sized spray bottle treating 12 or so plants two or three times meant I was actually putting very little of the mix into the soil. In the spring this year I was still on the original 8oz bottle of the Dr. Bonner's soap. This was not enough.

This year in the spring I began mixing it in a 4 liter (1/2 gallon ??) plastic milk jug. I HEAVILY poured it into the emerging eyes and repeated the treatment every 2 to 3 weeks in the spring and early summer. I used at least 2 full 4 liter jugs full for a treatment (maybe 3) I ran out of that first bottle of soap mid July so went a little longer to the next treatment - maybe 4 weeks. Here we are mid Aug. and so far there is not one leaf on any of the treated plants with nematodes. I know it's early and it may still show up but in the meantime a few other untreated plants are showing damage. This tells me that weather wise or what ever it is that determines the damage showing is already in place in my garden. I will treat the plants now showing damage and hope it works for next year.

The soap is expensive $20 for the bottle here at the health food store. If that is a once in a year expense, it's worth it. It seems a lot less invasive than boiling the poor things.

Pieter,
thank you for your reply.
I checked the bleach bottle, it is a grocery chain brand and contains 6.0% Sodium Hypochlorite. I did not measure exactly how much I exactly added to the water in the bucket, hopefully no more than 10% of the water, there I should improve.

The plants are growing at their place in my garden, soil has half compost, must have overcome the transplant and bleach shocks. A total of 3 or 4 leaves on the two plants became mushy and dried up in part, I cut them off. There are probably 4 leaves per plant which are healthy. I water the plants daily, so they seem to become used to the site and should be fine.
Thanks for your help! This is all new to me.
Bernd

Can anyone on this thread report how last year's treatment has affected this year's plants?

Are they at all smaller?

Any signs of nems?

Not sure why this is not showing up on page 1

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