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You find the gray fuzz on a Monday morning, coating a dying blossom at the bottom of your tomato plant like ash. By Friday it has crept 12 inches up the stem, and one fruit wears a ring of pale…
Your avocado tree looks thirsty even though the soil is wet. It takes as little as 6 to 8 hours of saturated soil for the swimming spores of Phytophthora to start a root infection, and the symptoms that follow look…
Force 20 Buds on One Thanksgiving Cactus A Thanksgiving cactus blooms when the nights get long and the air gets cool, not when you fuss over it. Give it 13 hours of darkness and nights near 60 degrees starting in…
Cowpea severe mosaic virus is a beetle-spread plant virus that can leave black-eyed peas and other garden legumes with crinkled, mottled leaves, stunted growth, and a much thinner harvest. If new cowpea leaves are coming in puckered and blotchy while…
Cottony leak is a fast-moving fruit rot that can turn a healthy cucumber, squash, or melon into a mushy, water-soaked mess within days, especially after a stretch of wet weather. If fruit resting on damp soil in your garden has…
Cottony blight is the common name for Pythium blight, a fast-moving fungal disease that can turn a healthy lawn into a greasy, matted mess within a day or two of hot, humid weather. If you have noticed circular patches of…
Coryneum fruit spot is the fruit-stage symptom of Coryneum blight, a fungal disease that also goes by shot hole disease, and it covers peaches, apricots, and other stone fruit with small purplish spots that turn scabby, gummy, and disfigured before…
Corticium blight is an older name still used for two related fungal problems, pink disease and thread blight, that wrap twigs and leaves in fine fungal threads and slowly girdle branches on trees like fig, citrus, coffee, and pepper. If…
Coniothyrium canker and dieback is one of the most common reasons a healthy-looking rose cane turns brown and dies from the tip down, often within a single growing season. If you already spend time pruning your roses each spring, this…
Coniothyrium leaf spot is a fungal disease best known for scarring yucca leaves with sunken brown lesions, though the same genus of fungi causes similar leaf spots on agave, dracaena, and a range of other landscape and houseplants. If you…
Constriction canker is a fungal disease of peach twigs and buds caused by Phomopsis amygdali (synonym Fusicoccum amygdali), named for the way small cankers form around leaf scars and slowly constrict, or girdle, the twig until it dies. It is…
Copper spot is a summer turfgrass disease that covers susceptible grass with small, circular, copper-colored patches, most noticeable right after a fresh cut. If copper spot shows up on your lawn, understanding what makes it worse will help more than…
Corm rot is a general term for several fungal diseases that turn the underground storage structure of plants like gladiolus, crocus, saffron, and taro soft, discolored, and unable to sprout. If a corm rot problem is destroying your bulb-like plantings,…
Common smut is one of the most recognizable diseases a home gardener or field grower will ever see on corn, because there is no mistaking a swollen, silvery gall bursting open into a cloud of black powder. If you are…
Columbia lance nematode, Hoplolaimus columbus, is a microscopic root-feeding worm that lives in the soil and damages plant roots from the outside and from within. It is best known as a problem in cotton, soybean, and corn fields across the…
Colletotrichum is best known for the leaf spot form of anthracnose, but the same fungal genus can also attack stems, shoots, and crowns directly. This form shows up as sunken cankers, dieback of shoot tips, and internal browning at the…
Colletotrichum leaf spot is a fungal disease caused by species in the genus Colletotrichum, the same group of fungi responsible for anthracnose on trees, shrubs, vegetables, and turf. It shows up as small, sunken spots with distinct borders, and on…
A plant that suddenly wilts and dies even though the soil looks fine and the roots seem intact often has a problem hiding right at the surface, where the stem meets the soil. That narrow band is called the collar,…
A tree or shrub that suddenly declines, loses limbs, or fails to leaf out in spring often gets blamed on drought, winter injury, or old age. Sometimes the real cause is underground and has been there for years: Clitocybe root…
A clematis that goes from lush and flowering to black and collapsed within a few days is alarming enough that most gardeners assume the worst. The good news is that clematis wilt, despite the dramatic collapse, is rarely fatal to…
