Interesting. Fungi are so complicated. The fungicides are for the plants correct? But the rhizoctonia solani will still survive in the soil correct? It can effect trees. I read that there are different strains of it, and each strain has it's specific hosts. I don't know if there's been any research to determine which plants are affected by each strain? Do you grow any plants or vegetables in Solanaceae? Is rhizoctonia solani all over the environment, or does it hitch a ride on plants and then invade people's yards? I had an Actaea rubra,(Red Baneberry) in the spring, with 2 nice flower umbells developing, and it turned all black and started getting mooshy. I removed all the diseased parts and washed it off, and planted it in a pot with good drainage and it recovered and made a 3rd umbell that bloomed. Do you think it was rhizoctonia solani that killed your Patrinia? I tried searching Rhizoctonia at facenook. There was no information about it, but there are 5 people at facebook that go buy the name Rhizoctonia Solani. Strange times these are.

"Either ways my entire garden is screwed and I may have to consider giving up"

I'm sorry this is so ridiculous. Rhizoctonia is a cosmopolitan pest and is going to be in any garden along the east coast. You need to address whatever cultural or soil compositional issues are causing it to run rampant for you. In the meantime I recommend you innoculate your garden with a biofungicide labeled for it, such as

https://www.evergreengrowers.com/lalstop-k61-wp.html

Ah, this is one of the fungi which seed growers know as 'damping off' (along with pythium and phytopthera ). Have had it happen to me when I had to treat all my seedlings with a copper based formula (Cheshunt). In your position, I would probably have an ideal strategy...but being forgetful and idle, would never manage to stay completely on top of everything...but for sure, I wouldn't be considering giving up. And neither should you.

Here's what I would do (although, I stress, I am not being prescriptive here, just suggesting how I would try to deal with this)

Potting mix - would continue with my usual commercial mix of potting soil, perlite or grit...with no additions from the compost heap or garden. Because the mix is sterile, I would probably consider adding mycorrhizal granules instead of a handful of garden topsoil.

Seedlings - instead of my normal practice of getting the seedlings into the ground as soon as possible, I would keep them in pots, up-potting as needed, for at least a year, since small seedlings are the most susceptible to fungal infections.At the point of transplanting into the open garden, I would innoculate the exposed roots with a dusting of mycorrhizal granules or powder.

Essentially, I would be going down a preventative path, by trying a couple of commercial fungicides, but mostly concentrating on. building up soil health. Mostly by using my home-made compost and extra supplements such as chicken manure pellets (or any other source of rotted manure which has not been contaminated by herbicides, so probably have to buy stuff). I think you have milorganite - an excellent source of additional nutrients, along with alfalfa, fish emulsion, zeolite and so on.

Jay, yes these will always still in the soil so not sure how effective fungicides alone will be especially when there are other factors that we can't control such as wet weather. It is also widespread in my .75 acre property so it is not going to be practical to treat every inch of my property. I do have tomatoes and peppers and they are in my raised bed about 75 feet away from the bed with all my affected plants but my tomatoes are also showing some kind of symptom weather that is R.Solani or something else. My patrinia definitely has R.Solani as my sanguisorba officinalis that I submitted to the lab is right next to it, and my entire bed is affected and goes all the way to my woodland garden. I did something similar to you as well last year. I dug a clump of a sanguisorba last early spring(2023) and the plants easily separated without me having to chop it-I must've ended up with like 20 different divisions, so I took 1 small division, washed it thoroughly and potted it in 5-1-1 mix and they grew nicely for a year until this year they started showing symptoms. I don't use facebook anymore, I've deactivated my account a while ago but I really hope I can find more info about this fungus

David, my bed is pretty well drained but we get a lot of water which I can't control. Otherwise I don't know what other factors there are that is causing it. I looked at the fungicide and it looks useful. But I'm not sure if it will be practical(both time and money) to have to spray my entire .75 acre property, since this disease is widespread in my property. Might be too late to say it now but maybe I should'nt have moved in a property this big...

HU, that is a good idea. I also just plant my new seedlings in the ground in their first year but waiting another year may be a better idea. I will try the mycorrhizal application for the next seedling I grow. I never used garden soil or compost for my potting mix though. It's strictly 5-1-1 mix. Although I don't really have issues with damping off when growing something from seed. It's the plants(most of them mature) that's already been in the ground that get it. The plants that have it now all get it 1-2 years after they got planted. I'm not sure if me dividing those plants prior to planting opened up an entry for the infection. Do you suggest I use mycorrhizal granules for every plant I plant in the future too? Like even big trees?

Yes...it has gotten much cheaper. You used to pay $$$ for a minuscule sachet but nowadays, you can buy it in 2.5 kilo tubs, often around $12 per kilo...and you are using this by the teaspoon, just directly dusting the plant roots or a small dusting where you sow seeds. You can also add biostimulants such as fulvic and humic acid. Essentially, you are getting your soil in good fettle and encouraging strong root growth. I think there are always pathogens around...part of the ecosystem as much as anything else, so we have to work around them by giving our plants every chance to thrive. And you can also try a trick we use in the UK to combat rose replant syndrome (this apparently doesn't seem to affect people in the US, mystifyingly, but is very noticeable here in the UK when planting new roses where they have previously been grown. Basically, the new bare-root roses are planted in a cardboard box, around 1 cubic , filled with good quality new planting mix, and plant the whole thing in the ground. The cardboard will decompose but not before the rose has started to grow a vigorous root system. I dunno if this would help you with future planting of perennials but for certain, I would give it a go.

Try not to become too despondent, Heruga. All of us who have been gardening for any length of time will encounter similar seemingly intractable situations. My soil is desperately worked out after over a decade without decent organic additions. I carried on, optimistically, for a few years, adding granular fertilisers, but I know my soil is not in good health, as well as being lean, stony and in a dry climate. Gotta deal with it now (after watching the slow but inevitable demise of many plants). I have a (vague) plan.

Heruga, concerning my Acraea rubra, I wonder if overfertilization was the cause? I wanted to use up some organic Cannabis fertilizes that were left over from the time I was growing it under lights in my basement. I mixed them all together with a 2 gallon sprinkling can and I clearly remember pouring it on my Red Baneberry. It turned black right after that, but none of the other surrounding species were infected, except perhaps a columbine which are less significant weeds in my garden. Some of my Cirsium altissimum plants have been dying from some unknown pathogen? It was a very wet spring and early summer, and the excessive heat and humidity may be the cause? Do you get your soil tested? They should sell soil test lab kits. There's a deadzone in one of my beds and everything I plant there dies. I can control Artemisi princeps planted in the ground by periodically ripping it out roots and all. 😅 Congratulations on getting free from the meta algorythm. It's sinister and does weird things to people, yet there are some treasures there.

I'm sorry but how do I not be so despondent? I truly don't know what to do right now. There's not enough information on this disease with what plants are resistant or immune so I can't do anything except hope that every new plant I plant survives. Fungicides may be a good preventative but for how long do I have to keep applying it for? Forever? In my .75 acre property that just isn't going to work in the long run. Increasingly wet weather also won't help, which is totally out of my control.

I feel that I really shouldn't have to be going through all that when the majority of gardens are disease free, at least not to my extent where half of your plants die on you over a period of years and that number increasing year by year. I've never had an issue at my previous house nor at my workplace with diseases to this extent. Maybe a few plants die from root rot and we end up pulling them out but nothing like my garden where its just literally an epidemic spreading from one plant to next. I also have never seen a post on houzz where someone asks for help with their completely collapsing garden. I will be honest I get very envious seeing everyone's beautiful, lush and full gardens in the monthly bloom thread from rouge, to the point where I don't even want to see it anymore. I know some of you especially people who have been gardening for decades will say gardening takes year of trial and error and see what works and what doesn't in your garden. Well, I'm pretty sure none of you had to deal with an epidemid like this in their garden. And I'm not talking about a few plants here and there a year that you lose unexpectedly. Also how much more plants do I have to lose just to know what works? I've already lost so many(at least half were self propagated which is even more crushing) and have to keep filling in the empty spots which then takes another extra few years to fill in. And sometimes they don't because the new plant replacement also dies. But right now about half my garden is dying which means I'd have to rip them all out, carefully dispose them so it doesn't spread to another part of the garden which is enough anxiety btw, and start over half of my garden. But I don't know how to start over. Basically my point is that I will be going around in circles trying to see what works when there is not enough info on this disease. I expect a lot of criticism from this comment but to me I feel like I'm approaching a dead end. If you ever had an epidemic like this in your garden maybe you'd understand better.

I hope you don't interpret slight exasperation as criticism, per se.

Clearly something 'outside the norm' is happening in your garden. To get to the bottom of that, you've had pathogen testing done. Fine. If you actually had a truly menacing pathogen like western US sudden oak death, the NJ Dept of Environment would be descending on your garden like something out of a hollywood flick. (yes, any lab you used, anywhere in the country, would have been professionally and legally obligated to inform "the authorities".) The pathogen you do have is totally ubiquitous in every garden so the issue is why is it affecting your plants so seriously? Therefore we have to look at: are these plants being overwatered, over-fertilized, or could there be some odd biotic factor like heavy metal contamination (just guessing!) that makes it more devastating than it should be? I'm not a specialist in resolving such situations, I just strongly believe there will be some kind of resolution, I just don't know what it is. Square 1 would be, what we always say (or should) in response to 'does X plant grow where I live'... WELL, LOOK AROUND FOR MATURE ONES! I forget which plants you have trouble with...let's just say hostas. If hostas are dying in your garden, but alive in 5 of your nearby neighbor's gardens, it's probably something you're doing wrong. (actually, hosta might have been a bad example because of the virus issue, but pretend that doesn't exist for the moment) OTOH if your entire neighborhood really does seem like a 'dead zone' where the only things that survive are silver maples, ailanthus, and oriental bittersweet, maybe there's some insurmountable thing going on, but then, I wouldn't want to live there as a human anymore, much less as a plant!

I don't believe I am doing anything wrong as my gardening habits and style is consistent elsewhere(previous house, workplace) and never usually have problems there. The problem may be the my property is literally a pit. Every neighbor's property surrounding me is higher and I am in the lowest spot. But I don't have any drainage issues. I addressed that in the first 2 years of moving in. Nothing usually pools in my property even with a heavy rain(maybe a torrential 3 in a day might). So I'm not sure if water is an issue. I don't overwater either. I only water during periods of no rain when the soil feels bone dry and that is only in the summer. In the spring soil temps are still cool and moist so I don't water then unless its a new plant.

I don't have problems with hostas. All of my problem plants are somewhat uncommon in typical home landscapes so I can't compare it my neighbors. Uncommon but not so rare to the point you question their survivability in my zone. Just to state some examples- patrinias, filipendulas, dracocephalums, callicarpa, caryopteris, thalictrum, sanguisrobas, aconitum, lychnis. All of those except dracephalums are common in my local nurseries. None of my neighbors care about their landscape so there are no perennials or shrubs to compare either. They mostly have just weedy lawns with some mature trees. But yes my property is surrounded by mature trees such as red maple, catalpa, elms(not so great), silver maple, tree of heaven, black walnut, bittersweet, mulberry, cottonwood, weeping willow, Japanese knotweed. So I don't know what that says. 80ft white spruces at my neighbors were dying and finalyl uprooted fell on to my property this past Spring so you know they didn't like it here

How did you make your raised beds and what were they filled with?

What raised beds are you talking about? I only have 3 for my vegetable gardens but they are next to my patio and isolated from the rest of my gardens.