Hallson Gardens

This HVX is driving me crazy. I bought a So Sweet about 10 years ago. From this mother plant I've now got about 30 nice sized young. So Sweet has in the past had some funny looking young leaves, but has always grown out of it. Now I've got one that looks just like HVX on emerging leaves, but how could it be? If it is I see no hope for the future. If this So Sweet has HVX I see no way of preventing it's spread to all varieties.

Hi BillyJoe,

Since So Sweet can catch the virus easily and will show symptoms quickly there is a chance that it was infected either when it was divided or at some other time that it was cut.

The virus can spread by shovels when digging around them or moving them, by pruners when cutting scapes, by scissors or pruners when cutting leaves, or even on your hands if you are breaking or pinching off leaves.

In nurseries especially there is so much handling going on that it is important to get rid of any HVX infected plants as soon as possible. That's why we do so much testing and so much tool cleaning.

We accidentally spread HVX to some lancifolia last year after moving all of our display plants and then cutting into lancifolia with the shovel, and we are still trying to find out what plant in our display garden had it. We are also testing the rest of the display garden that was moved at the same time, including my really old Sum & Substance. It's just crazy!

This post is 2005, and now its like 2011. Can you possibly remember if the Lanctifolia became infected with HVX, or was it destroyed before it showed symptoms?

Angie

Hi,

It turned out that the symptoms I was seeing back in 2005 on Lancifolia wasn't actually HVX. It took a lot of testing but I never found HVX in any of those display plants that we moved. As it turns out, moving and digging and cutting plants in the fall is the safest time. While HVX can still move to your shovels and tools, it won't move from those tools to the dormant plants that easily. It may still be possible as the HVX is still there, but when sap isn't flowing the plants don't catch it as readily.

So I think we were lucky to have moved our nursery in the fall of 2004 and not the spring of 2005 or things could have turned out different.