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Well I thought I would share the info I have so far on this product. A fellow canna breeder and new friend in Australia told me about a product he has been using on his cannas. It is called seasol a fertilizer made from sea weed that washes ashore off the coast of Australia. It is harvested naturally off the beach and processed to make seasol fertilizer. I am still not sure what the active ingredients are in the fertilizer it seems to not be like normal fertilizers and mainly deal in supplying the plant with vitamins.
The fertilizer was used on normal healthy cannas as well as fully virused cannas. The normal cannas grew and flowered better than normal from the use of the product. The virused plants produced new healthy leaves and tissue, and completely stopped showing all signs of the virus. The results in my friends photos looked amazing and it looks to be a somewhat partial solution to the canna virus as well as the virus in other plants.
Now with the problems of the product. The product itself works well from what I have seen and it does exactly what it says it can. The problem is the cannas are still carrying the virus and can still transfer it to other plants. So it will be hard if not impossible to tell which cannas have the virus which is difficult already. I have not heard yet but the virus symptoms may and probably will return once the fertilizer is out of the plants system. So the product will have to be used regularly on virued plants to keep the virus dormant. The worst news is the product is not commonly sold in the US by any wholesalers. I have been trying to see if some larger companies would invest in bringing bulk shipments in so I can try it myself as well as perform some experiments. I figure this may at least raise a eyebrow on here.
I am interested to hear everyone's comments on this and I know their maybe some negative feelings towards hiding the virus rather than destroying the plants. I could not agree more. The virus needs to be destroyed as soon as noticed. Here are some of the problems with the virus that makes this difficult already.
1 Most if not all cannas have virus, some carry up to 5 different mosaic viruses. One strain is much worse than others it seems
2 The virus may only show for one season or at certain times
3 Some cannas will show no signs of the virus but be a carrier
4 All canna suppliers and sellers have seen virus in their stock - THAT I KNOW OF
5 No one seems to know exactly how the virus is transferred. Many have ideas and sap transfer looks to be the case.
6 No one seem to have a sure idea how to prevent the spread of the virus. I personally dip each tools in a chlorine and water solution.
The solutions so far
1 destroy infected plants
2 Tissue culture the plant to get clean stock - Only true cure
3 Possibly use Seasol to cover the symptoms
4 ignore the problem and hope it goes away AKA live with it
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