So we planted this mala in March and over the summer we had some interesting developments. Around May the kalo looked really good, about 3 feet high, good color and plenty keiki. In June I started to take some of the keiki to start them up in another area of the yard that is great for kalo starting. In about August to September I started to notice quite a few aphids on the under side of the leaves and on top as well. I also started seeing some leaves start to have brown spots and some leaves began to almost disintegrate entirely except for that veins of the lau, into almost a skelatol remains of a leaf, if you can imagine that. I started to take care of the aphid problem by shooting off most aphids when I had the chance and then mixing a solution of soft soapy water to spray on the leaves after I had shot off most aphids. I also spread a little diatomaceous earth near the base of each kalo to prevent ants from carrying more aphids up the plant. For the most part this worked and the aphids are not as prevelant. But I still had a lot of leaves turning brown and disintegrating. So I started to read about Kalo leaf blight and thought that could be a possibility or maybe some kind of fungus condition. I am attaching the pdfs from CTAHR about blight because I found it very handy. After reading I came to the understanding that it could possibly be lack of nutrients in the soil maybe calcium or magnesium or the watering style (mostly by waterhose or sprinkler) I was using, and the plants not being able to allow collected water to dry properly. I recently put in a drip hose and covered it with some mulch and straw, cut all the leaves that had those brown lesions and got rid of them and so far so good. I also plan to see if I can get some organic supplemental fertilizers and we will see how that goes. Has anyone out there had this kind of problem before? I will see how it goes and give everyone an update on how it goes. Sorry I didn't take any photos of the skeleton leaves or the lesions. I will if it happens again. But here is the pdfs from CTAHR. Mahalo.
| taro_leaf_blight_in_hawaii.pdf |
| hawaiian_kalo_past_and_future.pdf |
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