The blighted hedge
You will all have heard of box blight, well sadly our little border hedge in Norfolk has been affected.
- The box hedge in June 2015
- We spotted small amounts of brown leaves
- In three small sections of the hedge
- One of the sections of blight
- We bought Fungus Clear Ultra which along with a similar Bayer product has had success in keeping blight under control
- The tops of of the affected leaves
- The undersides of the leaves
- After initial success with 3 treatments of the Fungus Clear Ultra which seemed to all but clear the signs of infection - the blight was back with avengance
- Spreading along the bushes
- Going deeper in
- And covered about a third of the border
- We decided to take the whole border out (double bagging the removed plants)
It’s not clear what caused the infection – there probably wasn’t enough air flow round the bushes as the bed is small and the shrubs next to it tended to overgrow the box. The Fungus Clear Ultra seemed to work and after 3 sprays at 14 day intervals there was very little sign of blight – until it came back with a vengeance in 2 weeks whilst we were away.
Hopefully removing the plants in the bed that have been affected will be enough to save the rest of the box in the garden – we will be keeping our eyes peeled.