Hello, I had a 20 foot row of marigolds down my walkway and within a few days the entire plants were encased in a webbing like substance, pretty much individually cocooned. It happened to 3 plants pretty much over night, i tried to wash it off, in the next day or so they were brown & dead and several more plants were encased. This continued until we pulled all the plants, it went through everyone of them in about a 7/10 days. These were 2nd generation seeds from the store bought plants I planted in April. My other 2nd gen are planted elsewhere and I believe they are suffering from mite problems but nothing like what happen to the ones by the walkway. All the 1st gen plants have died from what I assumed was the end of there season. Thank you in advanced for any help you can provide. P.S. Hope I'm posting and using this web page correctly, I haven't used forums before. If I mess up please point me in the right direction. Thanks again.
Sounds like a severe Spider Mite infestation...I had one myself this week. They killed a beautiful pot of Marigolds I had in a very short time.
if they are spider mites, i find a solution of a little oil based dishsoap, like Dawn, mixed with water and spryed over the webs will kill them. you have to wash the spray off the leaves after a few minutes otherwise the solution and sun combo could turn them black, kill the plants. i also have made a sudy bunch of water in a bucket and taken the foam on top and spread it over the entire plan, waited a couple minutes and sprayed it off with fresh water. i think it smothers the critters...hope this helps for your next planting marly.
