Gardening with fire!

So a couple of weeks ago, I had a mini kangaroo paw start to have its leaves turn black. Did a bit of searching and discovered that there is a disease that affects kangaroo paw called "ink disease" or "inkspot disease". It mainly turns up if you water your plants in the evening, and the water settles on the leaves. Unfortuantely though this disease doesn't have many choices for treatment in severe cases. The plant in question was rather badly affected, so it looked like unless it was treated, it would die. Turns out the only effective treatment is to burn the plant to the ground so it can grow again. Who knew? These guys: The Australian Native Plants Society. They have a page all about how to look after your kangaroo paw, and treat many of the issues. I didn't take any photos of mine because they already had rather good photos on their page, and mine seems to be following the same track. After the burning, three weeks later there are already a good number of new shoots.