My sunflower plants were healthy and fine. But suddenly I noticed small white spots or you can say white mold on sunflower leaves. As I am passionate about gardening, I can't focus on any work until I find the actual reason for a plant's disease and help my plants recover.
I decided to search over the internet and found that a lot of people are facing the same issue and some of them are even noticing this disease on the flowers not on the leaves.
But I am thankful that I found the actual causes behind this white spot disease on my sunflower leaves and also figured out how to recover.
Symptoms of white spots on sunflower leaves
It will start with small white spots (dusty type) on the upper part of the leaves, then it will gradually increase in number. It will also spread to other uninfected leaves very fast. In most cases, the symptoms appear when the blooming season is over due to the temperature rise.
If you do not treat your plant, the spots will gradually spread on the healthy stems as well.
Reasons:
The white spots can only be found in humid and hot weather. So if the temperature crosses 25°C or 77°F (and weather is humid) you can notice this type of disease on the sunflower leaves.
That is the perfect climate for the Erysiphe cichoracearum (powdery mildew) to grow and spread. So it's a disease from fungi.
If the air circulation is not good, then it will increase the chances of this white spot disease.
If you place your sunflower in a shady place, it can also develop powdery mildew.
Recover your sunflower from White spots - Powdery mildew
Once your sunflower leaves are infected it's really hard to recover the infected plants. But if you follow the below steps it will help not to spread White spots ( Powdery mildew ).
- Avoid overhead watering: Do not water from above as it can increase the humidity around the leaves.
- Maintain good air circulation: You need to maintain good air circulation around your plants so that the fungi can not germinate on the leaves easily. Crowded plants or locations with poor air movement can create microclimates that favor the development of powdery mildew.
- Susceptible Varieties: Some varieties do not get infected easily. Try to grow those varieties.
- Proper sunlight: Sunflowers love direct sunlight. So grow them in a sunny place. Lack of sunlight is also a good condition for the fungi to grow and spread.
In my personal experience, my sunflowers were planted in a place where sunlight was not coming properly. Besides that the plants were surrounded by other plants and there was high humidity. I removed some of the other plants beside my sunflowers and followed the above tips and believe me it really helped.
