Why Lily of the Valley Leaves Turning Yellow?

Lily of the valley leaves turning Yellow may be a frightening sight if you’re fresh to cultivating them, but the yellow lily of the valley petals don’t invariably suggest catastrophe.

If it’s near finishing the growing period, it could naturally indicate that your plant is progressing dormant to provide for its monumental entrance next year.

Still, lily of the valley are pretty solid plants; they do occasionally get sick, so if the timing looks wrong or you recognize other symptoms that might point to a sick plant, look at these typical causes of yellow lily of the valley leaves:

Rusts

Rust issues usually appear out as yellow spots with rust-colored fungal spores on the underside of the leaf. This fungal infection looks pretty severe, but if you get it beforehand, you can treat it with fungicide, and it will improve. Just ease conditions that favor fungal growth, like overcrowding and overly wet soil.

Foliar Nematode

If just the spaces between the veins turn yellow before basically turning brown, you may have a complication with foliar nematodes. These parasites are tricky to eliminate, so the excellent bet is eradicating affected plants.

In the prospect, don’t water the leaves of your lily of the valley to hinder foliar nematodes from raiding.

Stem Blight

If your lily of the valley has yellow stains on the surface of its leaves, it could point to stem blight. Spots may be yellow or grayish, but they’ll immediately turn brown as the fungus extends to the crown.

Sadly, there’s no alternative to save this plant, so it’s best to eliminate it and either decontaminate the ground around it or remove that so you don’t extend the fungus.

Lily of the valley is surprisingly adaptable and easy to grow. Indeed, it spreads aggressively farther north. Here, its vigor is checked somewhat by the hot climate.

For the foliage to look good long into the season, you will need to place it where there is some shade for at least half of the day, and the soil stays moist.

Spring is lily of the valley’s best season. The lovely spring-green leaves clasp a soft and exquisitely scented spike of bell-shaped flowers. If you have a bed of them, pick some to perfume a room in your home. The leaves develop a dark, forest green color as spring progresses and the flowers fade.

Sometimes a few of the flowers get pollinated; these will be replaced by tiny green fruits that turn red in fall. The fruits and all parts of the plant are poisonous.

During the summer, you might have to supply water if the weather is parched. Slugs can be a problem, and you might have to use an iron phosphate slug bait to keep the foliage looking good. Inevitably, a drift of lily of the valley looks a bit tatty by the end of the summer. What remains turns yellow as it goes dormant in the fall.

You can get a bed of lily of the valley to fill in a bit faster by keeping it well watered and providing an organic mulch such as chopped leaves to keep the soil cool and release a steady stream of nutrients as it decays.

How To Plant Lily Of The Valley

Lily-of-the-valley is valuable as a low-maintenance ground cover in a shaded area. But the slender roots do creep far abroad in the ground. These plants naturalize so quickly in fact that they can become invasive.

To include lilies in your backyard next year, determine now where you prefer to plant the bulbs. Lilies can thrive in a shrub border where they show off their striking flowers against green leaves.

They are excellent accent plants for an entrance, a balcony, or a picture window. We can plant them among other flowering perennials; just don’t let them tower over smaller plants like soldiers.

Plant at least three in a group. They will keep each other up when the stalks emerge and make a more impressive presentation as they bloom. Three bulbs fit perfectly in a 10-inch plastic pot.

Rule No. 1 for prosperity with lilies is excellent drainage. Indicated that most of us garden in clay soils, we have to work out how to apply lilies proper drainage.

Raising the bulbs in bowls is one solution. Another is to plant the bulbs on a minor slope. A raised flower bed also provides positive drainage.

If you’ve never tried lilies before, experiment with a three-pack from a local nursery. When you learn how much response you get for a small expense, you might decide to order from the bulb catalogs that let you choose from dozens of appealing colors.

Lily of the valley Information

Botanical Names: Convallaria Majalis

Description: Growing to eight inches tall, this highly perfumed member of the lily family forms a dense carpet in shady spots (such as on the north side of homes) where few other things proliferate. Each curving stalk holds 10 to 15 perfectly shaped bell-shaped blossoms. Pink lilies of the valley are sometimes found in specialty catalogs today.

Challenges: For indoor bloom, put three or four lilies of the valley pips (upright buds of rhizomes) in a six-inch pot before frost destroys the foliage. If you forgot, they’re available from mail-order houses. You can enjoy the wonderful perfume inside this winter and then plant the pips outside in spring. In a shady spot, they’ll continue to multiply and bloom for many years.

Did you know: A European native, lilies of the valley are grown for perfume there, and in many European countries, folklore and symbolism are attached to the flower. The plant also was used for medicinal purposes.

One example from a 16th-century English botanist says to put the blossoms in a glass; set it in an anthill, covered for one month, and the liquid remaining will treat the “Paine and grief of gout.” Rather than a medicinal cure-all, today, we know that all parts of the plant are somewhat poisonous.