PLM Pansies Brand "X" Pansies
Pansies are the only flowering annual that survives the winter and the most common choice for seasonal color plantings in our area. Despite their hardiness, they do fall victim to diseases in our mild and wet winters and this record breaking wet winter has been one of the most challenging for pansies. The disease is most prominent in poorly draining and shady beds and where pansies have been planted for years.
We have developed a maintenance program that reduces the impact of the disease. These diseases are difficult to control but our program has been effective in most situations. Our program includes supplementing each planting with fresh sterile potting soil each fall at planting and following that with monthly fungicide treatments through the winter. This increases the cost of our pansy program but has become a standard practice as without these steps, the pansies will likely fail like they do with Brand 'X'.
Even with our comprehensive program, after years of pansies, the soil becomes too disease ridden that supplemental potting soil is not enough. Due to this, we are finding that eventually we need to replace the potting soil and will likely do this every 5 years
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PLM Healthier Pansies
Our pansy plantings are not disease free but are on most properties doing okay to great. Our program includes how they are grown, how we treat the soil at planting and ongoing fungicide treatment. We treat all plantings for disease monthly throughout the winter and when disease shows up, we treat up to weekly to control. We are not out of the woods and will keep up the fight until better weather in the coming spring.
Brand "X" Diseased Pansies
The pictures above are examples of plantings of other contractors that we have seen recently that have fallen victim to the disease. These plantings have not received the maintenance we provide and have thus completely failed. We see this year after year and wonder why these properties continue to have Brand 'X' plant pansies which always fail.
