How can my club run an auction or sale in this era of daylily rust?

Last updated 10/25/07.

THIS IS A PRELIMINARY VERSION. PLEASE SEND IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENT TO MIKE HUBEN.

Most AHS clubs and conventions rely heavily on raising funds from auctions and sales of daylilies. Our traditional practices of mixing together and selling heaps of plants from numerous gardens, some of which may now have daylily rust, is a sure recipe for an orgy of contagion. Rust is well worth avoiding. Here are some suggestions for avoiding bringing rust into gardens.

Vendors:

Each garden contributing should provide an honest statement of its rust status: whether there is spraying, whether rust has even been observed there, and whether rust is possibly present because of nearby infected gardens. Rust infections can be concealed for long periods. Information about rust status is very important to many buyers, and should not be treated lightly. To this end, plants from separate gardens should not be mixed together for auctions. This will simplify informing purchasers of rust status. For sales, either the club should have a policy of what conditions for minimal conditions for sale, or should ask that individual plants be labelled.

Buyers:

Buyers should be advised to practice good hygiene with new acquisitions. Initial treatment could consist of trimming of all foliage to the soil line or shorter (since rust doesn't seem to develop below the soil line), peeling off of remains of outside leaves, and thorough washing in plain water. This could be followed by an overnight dip in Bannermax or Bayleton according to package directions. Then it would be advisable to quarantine the plant from the rest of the garden while checking for rust on regrowth. There is no prescribed period of quarantine, but since rust has been informally reported to be quiescent for up to 5 months, a full growing season is a good guess. If signs of rust (or even suspicions of rust) appear, the trimming, peeling, soaking and quarantine can be repeated. Ideally, the quarantine site should be as distant from other daylilies as possible and downwind, in case spores are shed. Clubs should provide a handout about the problem and recommended treatments for purchased plants.

Discussion:

So far, discussion and research on rust has primarily focussed on how major growers with economic interests should treat the problem. The consumer side, the interests of small gardeners, has gotten very short shrift.

Because of this emphasis, or perhaps simply because this is a relatively new disease problem, there's no research on frequency of infection in plants being sold. As a substitute for that information, customers want to know the rust status and practices of growers. This information is now forthcoming from many growers and breeders, and hopefully will increase. While it is hard to say whether customers will be able to make valid use of that information, they want to try.

A comprehensive rust prevention and control program goes well beyond treating and quarantining incoming plants, but that is beyond the scope of these suggestions.

This may be stating the obvious, but rusty plants should be identified as rusty, or perhaps not sold at all. Selling rusty plants to gardens where rust is present and untreated or to gardens with rust control programs would be valid. Selling rusty plants to unsuspecting gardeners who do not yet have rust should be discouraged.

Some growers will not know their own rust status, because they are unfamiliar with the problem. There lies an opportunity for education at the sale.

Bagging plants might protect them from spores in the sales area. This might be a good idea if the plants are brought from clean gardens (something that is hard to ascertain), and if buyers will not cut back the plants. Plants bagged in plastic would need to be kept out of the sun until they are unwrapped.

The above suggestions are for areas where rust is not yet overwhelming. In the south, new practices seem to be emerging for tolerance of rust. Growers are eliminating the most susceptible and heavily damaged varieties, and retaining the ones that show relatively little rust. If rust is locally epidemic and unavoidable, this is a sound strategy, and clubs shouldn't need to do more than note that rust is omnipresent, including on plants being sold. Clubs might not want to accept the most susceptible plants for sale or auction unless this is prominantly noted, as it would be a good way to discourage beginners with plants that will develop conspicuous disease.

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Copyright 2007 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ).
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