I have recently bought some small bedding plants for my front garden and one of them seems to be dying.?

Question

on closer inspection i have found what look like small white eggs (about 1cm ) around the roots of the plant. there is quite alot of them so obviously this is causing the plant to die. my Q is - what laid these eggs? and more importantly how do I get rid of them without killing the plant off completely?

Answer 1

Are they eggs or fertilizer pellets?

You can try picking them out if you really think they are eggs.  Bedding plants can get missed with the hose when being watered.  Could be your little fellow was one of the unlucky ones.

Answer 2

If you see these white pellets just around one plant, I would take them to the nursery and ask someone there.  Don't just take it for granted that it is fertilizer, it may not be. And, someone said take it out of the pot. You said it was a bedding plant, so it is not in a pot but in the ground. Ask someone at your nursery. If it is indeed fertilizer, maybe too much from the potting soil (if any) gathered around the roots of this plant. If this is just in the ground, and there is no potting soil added, and you haven't fertilized, then it is not fertilizer.

Answer 3

Yeah, probably fertilizer pellets.

Mostly clear with a bit of opaqueness on one side?

If so...fertilizer. This is a slow release fertilizer, so it's probably NOT what's killing it.

Other possible problems: not enough water, too much water, plant is rootbound (pull it out of the pot and if the roots wrap around and around, it's rootbound), a simple fungus

It could really be a number of things. If it's discolored (other than just brown from dying) then it probably has a fungus of some kind. You could try a fungicide and see if that works.