Lavender shab

What you see

Individual shoots wilt and die while the rest of the plant looks well, then whole branches go grey and brittle. Dark sunken lesions appear on the stems near the base. Plants often die in their third or fourth year.

Conditions

Wet, heavy or rich soil, and mulch or damp material sitting against the woody crown. Lavender is a dry-hillside plant; anything else stresses it into susceptibility.

Treatment

Cut out dead branches into clean wood and remove them. Pull any mulch away from the crown. A badly affected plant is usually best replaced.

Prevention

Plant in sharp-draining, poor, gritty, alkaline soil in full sun. Mulch with gravel, never with compost or bark. Never feed it. Prune annually into green wood so it does not open up and hold moisture.

Months: May, June, July, August, September

Plants

Lavender

Remedies

Not recorded — the field is blank rather than guessed.

The thing people get wrong

Lavender in Portugal usually dies of kindness rather than disease - rich soil, a generous compost mulch and regular watering, all of which would delight most plants and slowly kill this one. If your lavender is going grey and woody in year three, look at what is against its crown. Gravel mulch and neglect are what it actually wants.