Q.I bought several African Violets. One of them was very small, a graft from a larger leaf. It looked healthy though, and I just watched
it. Now I detected that the large leaf is greying and I cut it down by half. I suspect that the plant was overly wet during shipment and the leaf got damaged, and now I have a case of BOTRYTIS. Your acticle mentioned to use Captan or Benomyl. Benomyl I cannot find at all on the web. Captan is available. My question is how to treat the plant since I cannot wet the leaves? Do I wet the soil? How does that work? Please help.
Certified GKH Gardening Expert
African Violets are very sensitive to any water on the leaves at all. This will cause what you are seeing now. You can try powdered sulfur as a dust. It may get rid of the issue without getting the leaves wet. Be sure to treat the other plants to prevent it spreading.
Most sources say to destroy the affected plant and treat healthy plants.
Here is our entire collection of AV articles to help: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/houseplants/african-violet
