In early September last year, we purchased fifty select Hellebores as young plants in 3" pots around the perimeter of the Crab Apple Garden. They all survived the winter and began to grow in the Spring. By early June they entered a kind of suspended animation and stopped growing. They all looked healthy enough but no new growth appeared and that remained the case for two months.
On August 1, we decided to take the two-month problem in hand by digging up all fifty plants and looking for Jumper Worms. Every plant had ten to fifteen worms IN the root system as well as around it. Some were big fat worms, others were slender and still others were maybe only an inch or two long. They all exhibited the reason for their name, twisting and "jumping" in an attempt to avoid capture. We threw all the worms into a bucket and by the time we had uprooted and cleared all fifty plants of worms, we had gathered five inches of worms at the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket.
We then took the worm-free and labelled plants with their wonderful dense root systems and healthy leaves to 50 1, 2 or 3 gallon pots we had prepared with compost only. We replanted all 50 plants and, because they grew in shady conditions, we've stretched a dense netting over them so they don't scald in the sun. We'll water them and feed them regularly for two months and hope to see bright green young leaves appearing soon.
In the meantime we'll periodically turn the soil under the crab apples to check for more worms before bringing the rejuvenated plants back into the garden in late September.
It is absolutely clear to us that the Jumper Worms caused these young plants to stop growing. The worms robbed the plants of all the nutrients they need to grow, though no plants were killed. They showed no browning of the leaves. They all looked healthy. They just stopped growing.
Massed Epimediums planted nearby the Hellebores appear to be unaffected. Could it be that all the nearby Epimediums are, after 10 years, so deep rooted that they remain unaffected? We're going to uproot a few of them to see what more we can learn.
In the meantime, Mary is finding Jumper Worms throughout the garden but we see no ill-effects. There may be more damage than we realize. We'll see.
worms