Gardening & Landscaping
ohioloveyou
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Downy mildew on impatiens
I think my impatiens have developed the dreaded downy mildew. I thought I had escaped it this year, but we've had rain every day for a week, and lo and behold today I see the white spores on the underside of the leaves.
So, I've read that they need to be pulled out and destroyed separately from any other compost. Do I really need to pull them? I hate to have wasted all that money. 
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Re: Downy mildew on impatiens
You can leave them, but they're only going to get worse looking, and will contaminate your soil to the detriment of whatever you plant there in the future. So yeah, I would pull them out.
And you're right, don't put them into your compost. The downy mildew will stay in it, and you don't want to be spreading that around your gardens! Never put any kind of diseased plants into your compost.
I thought I heard that the impatiens downy mildew was a national thing, and I haven't even seen many impatiens in garden centers around here this summer - I'm sort of surprised that you could find them in the first place. Even the ones that are in the stores and look okay now are probably infected and will develop visible signs later. It's in most of the nursery stock from last year.
Sugar & Spice
I was surprised to find them too, but I trusted my nursery and went ahead and bought a flat (I only have a small area I planted them in). The nursery actually had tons! They were completely fine since I planted them in May until this week. The soil hasn't had a chance to dry out in over a week, so I think that probably sent them over the edge.
It's only a few plants right now, but it spreads so fast I'll probably end up losing the whole lot. Ugh. I'm planting begonias next year.
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