Asters yellows does remain in live plant material over winter. Not in soil. You can still find the "older" varieties online if you really want them though.

Just an observation...many of my echs had 'Aster Yellow' two years ago (I didnt recognize it at the time). However these same echs bloomed just fine the following year...at least for awhile and then in August 'Aster Yellow' reasserted itself.

This issue coupled with the 'sunflower moth' infestation led me to make the decision to rip out much of my echs this past late summer. I still have some PowWow Berry and White + a couple "Hot Coral (Sombrero series). If these remaining plants do poorly this season due to AY or SMoth I will remove all these coneflowers. Sunny real estate is way to valuable for plants that aren't able to perform at their best.

I had built up stocks of Meringue, Cranberry Cupcake, (excellent little plants) Magnus, among others. All gone and gaping holes remained. Expletives and obscenities rained down. I even swore time to time. Whimper.

As nevermore stated, it does remain in live plant tissue( roots), but not in the soil. The leaf hopper population last summer was extremely high.

Not only was the leafhopper population high last year, but the list of plants affected by aster yellows is also depressingly huge. I had to destroy a number of plants last year, including Echinacea. Oh well, time for new varieties anyway. On the up side, Echinacea purpurea (& many of its hybrids) isn't terribly long-lived anyway.

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Agreed.... but i think the bigger issue is that plants are being sold that are obviously infected and expressing the distorted green petaled flowers on shelf from the growers and end vendors.

I have seen it at big box stores and independent nurseries. The big box stores won't really do anything about it.. unless they take the time to tell the supply nursery... who then takes them off the shelf... which seems quite unlikely to happen.

I have pointed the infected plants out to some nurseries and they pull them plants right in front of me and toss them.. which is good... but others won't do anything either since they have the chance of loosing $$$. I suppose it might be difficult to go back to the plant plug supplier a year or more later and say "hey.. those plugs you sold me are infected" without them just saying that they were infected at the nursery site. One nurseryman told me that all of the plants they had that were infected were very recent arrivals from the plug supplier.... so the infection is starting early in the plant cycle.

So the lesson of the day is to never buy an echinacea that doesn't have some flowers that are fully opened and developed. This will at least give you a better chance of buying an uninfected plant (even though an infected plant doesn't always show it's infection right away). If you do see a single plant of the group though that is infected... i would avoid the whole lot of them.

And to expand on your last post 'nevermore':

I will not buy any impatiens walleriana this comiing season as for me last year I had most of these plants succumb to 'downy mildew'. As far as I know there is no reason to think any headway has been made in terms of new variations of walleriana that can withstand this blight.

So the lesson of the day is to never buy an echinacea that doesn't have some flowers that are fully opened and developed. This will at least give you a better chance of buying an uninfected plant (even though an infected plant doesn't always show it's infection right away). If you do see a single plant of the group though that is infected... i would avoid the whole lot of them.

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Very good point. This is what happened to me. I bought Pow Wow Ech and didn't see any problems till the blooms .

(even though an infected plant doesn't always show it's infection right away).

And that is what I have experienced and that is why no more echinacea will be in my garden.

Most of the 'pow wow's that a saw last year were infected. In you do see an infected plant, look over the young blooms to see how they appear. Usually there is something funky going on. It will help you Id it on other plants.

There is always seed varieties you can try now. With 'Cheyenne spirit' seed you are suppose to get all the colors. Most seed catalogs carry.

We pulled diseased plants off the shelf as we found them. I'm sure a bunch got sold though. It was probably 40% of our crop last year, but that's fairly unusual. As stated, there was a HUGE population of leaf hoppers last year.

Growing from seed will guarantee you're starting with clean stock, but that stock can just as easily become infected that growing season.

Impatiens downy mildew is a huge impending doom issue. We'll likely see common impatiens going by the wayside as a common plant if they can't breed a resistant variety. On the up side, IDM mainly affects the I. walleriana group. Many other species are unaffected or resistant, including new guinea and supatiens hybrids. It's quite possible a resistant strain will be bred. But honestly, if not I won't cry much. My industry would lose a huge revenue producer, but not a particularly awesome plant. And if you've had IDM, don't buy impatiens. The spores are now in your soil and may be there a long time.

The Plant Geek
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So where you infected plants on your site for more then a year?

The impatien issue is amazing. I had the most lush impatiens last year ( i was never a fan before that)... then over a few days they all lost their leaves as if it had frosted during the night. Might try the new g types next year to see what happens.

A small number of Echinacea were held over from the previous year, but those are kept in a different location and weren't brought to the retail bench until aster yellows was already present on the current season's batch. (I should clarify I'm talking my day job here, as my own nursery currently doesn't sell Echinacea)

IDM is devastating. I noticed it at work this year, it's a problem that is just appearing in WI. Indeed, from a distance before you got close enough to see the characteristics, it looked like we had a frost in August.

The Plant Geek
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