Splash dropping buds

[roadrunner]

I have a beautiful Splash plant which has been covered with buds for several weeks.  Every bud that is on the verge of opening has dropped, about 20 so far.  The buds don't yellow before dropping.  It's growing in the house in an area with several other hibiscus that are blooming normally and none of those blooms show any signs of thrip damage so I've eliminated thrips and gall midge as possible causes.  Pictures below of Splash plant and the growing area.  Anyone else having problems with bud dropping on this cultivar?  This is reminding me of Blonde Ambition which was a prolific bud dropper until it grew into a mature plant after being moved into a 10 inch container.

Thanks,
dave

[davidwood]

Dave I am not sure you can eliminate Gall Midge and Thrips just cos the others around it don’t have it, I would very much like to know what Charlie says about that, I for sure don’t know about Thrips but I have read that Gall and other midges can be very local to 1 plant.

Here is a good read from Charlie on the Gall Midge   http://www.hiddenvalleyhibiscus.com/care/gallmidge.htm , you can see by the way they reproduce that it could easily be just one plant.

I have done quite a bit of research lately on this as I have a very similar problem to you, I have 3 cv’s which have near total bud drop.

Here is another read from a good source   ‘The gall midge is a small fly that lays it eggs in flower buds. When the eggs hatch, tiny worm-like larvae emerge that damage the young bud, causing it to fall to the ground. The larvae then leave the bud and enter the ground to pupate and reappear as flies in about 3 weeks. Growers are successfully combatting the midge by using insecticides like Orthene and Cygon to kill them when they are in the bud and granular products Dursban and Diazinon or one of the replacement products for these two like Triazicide to kill them in the ground. Products containing imidacloprid are also extremely useful.’’

Dave I myself am now at the beginning of a full out attack on this pest [weather it Thrips or Midge I don’t know], I was very encouraged to see a small improvement when I used the Bayer 3-1 last month, this has in it imidacloprid, the problem was I ran out of Bayer but have now got hold of another product locally with imidacloprid in it and have started again, it does seem that you need to attack this problem if its bad with 2 products to be successful , 1 to spray the bud and the other a systemic.
I reckon I should know in about 18 days and I will let you know.

[roadrunner]

David, thank you for your input but I read about both pests in the pest section of the website before posting this question in the forum.  There are 16 hibiscus plants crowded and touching each other in front of that 4 foot wide window so I'm reasonably sure any pest if present would have no problem spreading to other plants in the area.  Also none of the dropped buds have any indication of thrips, they are pristine.  None of the open blooms on the other hibs show any kind of scratch marks or distortion typical of thrip activity and I haven't seen any thrips either.  I know what they look like as my roses get clobbered by them for the first blooming cycle every spring.  I'm sure neither pest is involved, especially not the gall midge since these are large mature buds about a day away from opening that are dropping and there is no yellowing so that eliminates the midge as symptoms are wrong.   These plants have also been on Kontos twice a week for several months so even if it was the gall midge, the cycle should have been broken by the Kontos in the potting mix killing any potential larva.  These are house plants and are not exposed to the high temperatures that yours are so they are not getting heat induced bud drop like I see on First Lady most of the summer here.  It is summered outside.  I have 70 hibiscus plants in 3 rooms inside the house and this is the only one dropping buds.  I doubt that it's 'winter inside the house dry air syndrome' either since I actually have a condensation problem on the inside of the windows throughout the house every cold morning so the humidity isn't low.  I suspect it's likely a case of a cultivar that may be more sensitive than most to stresses such as the potting mix getting too dry between waterings.  That was definitely the case with Blonde Ambition when it was a younger plant.  Only one out of about 7 buds would make it to the open stage until it grew into a larger mature bush.  I was wondering if any other forum members that are growing Splash have experienced any excessive bud drop?

Thanks,
dave

[davidwood]

Whatever it is Dave I hope you can get to the bottom of it, everything you describe has also happened to my Electric Orange, the reason I say about Midge and Thrips is I have no clue as to what else can be causing it and its driving me nuts, its over a year now, in fact its nearly 2 years since I have had a bud fully develop on Transcendent.

[roadrunner]

David I hope so too.  I think mine is stress related.  I did let the plant get too dry a couple of times but not enough to do any leaf damage.  That happened a few weeks ago, but maybe the negative impact from that persists. I've let several cultivars get a little too dry from time to time and had no impact on blooming so I think this cultivar may just be more sensitive than most.  It's difficult keeping up with the watering when you have 100 plants and they don't dry out at the same rate.  Sometimes I manage to miss watering one or two.

Good luck with yours.  Unfortunately you can't really try growing them in cooler spots in your climate unless you possibly can try growing them inside under grow lights.  I'm planning on growing as many as 40 plants in the house year round under T5 lighting.  The reason for this is to alleviate crowding in the small greenhouse.


Did you notice the bogus posts in several topics by an apparent hacker or spammer?  I hadn't seen any posts like this for several years.

dave

[davidwood]

I hope so too Dave, we will see over the next 3 weeks if I can sort it out, I am just about throwing everything I have at the problem with a hope something will sort itself out.

Strangely enough something is happening which I am not sure good or bad, since I started treating the 3 main culprits the problem has spread to other CV’s, now I am not sure weather I ever told the story about me taking Cindy’s advice about the shore flies but something similar could be happening.

I had 3 plants up on a shelf that had these flies forever, they weren’t really a problem other than when you got close to them it was not that nice, I read an article where Cindy says put a drop of detergent in a gallon of water and you will get rid of them, so I did as Cindy advised and like magic no more shore flies, wonderful except they had just moved down lower in the garden and now where a problem, I did get rid of them eventually by watering everything I had with detergent.
Anyway the moral to that story is I am now going to treat everything in the garden rather than just the cv’s with the problem.

Yes saw that spam stuff, very strange and made no sence to me.