Identifying and Treating Jasmine Diseases

Jasmine plant with white flowers

There are many plant diseases that can cause harm to plants, and jasmine is not immune to those threats. Considering the plant is capable of treating many diseases and medical conditions in humans, it's strange that the plant itself can suffer from a variety of diseases.

Plant diseases are any caused by fungi, pests or bacteria. Learning about these different jasmine diseases will help you to protect your plants from them.

Most types of Jasmine are fairly hardy and don't suffer from many problems. They also don't suffer from many problems with pests. However, there are many different varieties of jasmine and, therefore, a range of susceptibility throughout the family of plants.

1. Flower Blight

leaf with brown spots

Flower blight is a very common disease to affect a number of plants, including Jasmine. This can be identified by brown spots on the leaves. They eventually turn completely brown and start to fall off. This disease is caused by a fungus and is most likely to affect your plants just after warm spells of weather.

This is a very dangerous disease for Jasmine because the spores of the fungus can survive throughout the winter in the soil. This means that they will be able to re-infect any new plants planted in the same soil.

To control flower blight you should pick any of the infected flowers before they have the chance to produce spores. If any plant material falls onto the ground then you must pick this up and throw it away or burn it. Remember to never compost infected plant material.

2. Leaf Drop

It's normal for all plants to shed leaves when they get older. There are a number of reasons for this. The first reason could be caused by flower blight (see above). Other reasons could simply be because you are over or under watering them. Over watering or under watering will cause the leaves to drop off.

3. Powdery Mold

powdery mold on green plant leaves

Powdery mildew or powdery mold is a very common problem within all plants. This can be identified by looking for powdery white substances on the leaves. To control this condition you should use a fungicide spray and it's important to repeat this treatment three times with two weeks in between treatments. You will need to choose a fungicide that is suitable for treating powdery mildew. Ask for help if you're not sure which ones will work.

4. Choosing Healthy Plants

When you are buying new jasmine plants for your garden it's very important that you don't accidentally buy diseased plants. These could infect the rest of your garden if you're not careful. Just because a plant has a lot of flowers on it doesn't mean that the plant is actually healthy. Inspect the quality of the leaves and look out for any of the symptoms that are mentioned above.

If your plants start to suffer from any of these conditions, treat them as quickly as possible to prevent spread.