Actually the best cure for lacebug is moving the plants into a shadier location. Spiders love lacebugs, but don't like sunny locations. It is easy to find borers, they leave a large tunnel in the center of the stem between the live part and the dead part. Drought also causes a plant to die branch by branch. The roots on the sick plant may be compromised causing it to not be able to deal with drought effectively. Often, root problems are a consequence of poor planting. If the roots are not opened up when they are planted, they will eventually strangle each other. If so, there is not a lot you can do about it. When this plant is dormant in the fall, you could dig it up and spread the roots out and replant. Never let the roots dry out. If they dry out, the plant is dead. Here is a link that might be useful: How to grow rhododendrons and azaleas.

Potted azaleas grown in peat often dry out after being shipped or purchased, the diligent watering being received at the production facility no longer being enjoyed. (You also have to really be on top of potted miniature roses brought home from stores, those seem to dry out and wilt if you look in the other direction for a few seconds). You may have had a situation develop where only the outside was being dampened with each watering, until finally the plant got dry enough to show top damage. Depending on what part of California you are in, perhaps another thing that may have happened is it eventually got burned by mineral salts in the tap water. Salt deposits on the leaf margins or the top of the potting medium would point to that.

I have now sprayed for everything that could be on the plants. I can't tell any difference yet, but hope whatever is happening stops. Funny thing is, the affected plants are putting out blooms galore! Thanks for your help.

Azalea Gall. The pods start green and-or pink. Then they get a white-ish color when they release the fungi. You need to prune them off as soon as you see them and throw them away in the trash. Throw away the leaves too. Unfortunately, there are no resistant azalea varieties or a fungicide that you can use. Another approach may be to interrupt the life cycle of blisters early (by pruning these blisters) and make conditions difficult for fungi, in a way that would not harm the health of azaleas. What I meant by interrupting the life cycle ... The new bulbs have green or pink colors. After a while, the blisters develop growth similar to white mold, which is when the fungal spores start to spread. So, remove the blisters when they are green and have not released their fungal spores yet. It would take several years to be effective if you have many but, after several years, pruning off the blisters would reduce the number of blisters you get. To make the environment difficult for fungi: I would increase the sunlight in the area of the affected azaleas (you could for example prune trees or raise their canopy); replace the mulch with a new mulch (the old mulch may have a lot of fungal spores); collect all plant debris a.s.a.p. (leaves, branches, flowers) and throw them in the trash; and consider switching to drip irrigation (this will reduce the humidity of the environment and will not make branches and leaves of azalea wet). When my sprinkler broke, I replaced it with a drip irrigation system to reduce humidity because my hydrangeas had a lot of Cercospora leaf spots. If your soil is often wet or soggy, I would reduce the amount of water a little. Also, if the azalea plants touch each other, consider trimming to prevent one plant from easily infecting another plant. And just consider a little more cutting to add sunlight inside the dark areas inside the azaleas. Pruning and opening the plant in places provides more sunlight and can also dry out wet parts of plants. I guess you could call all of these things good sanitation techniques that can help you reduce the blistering problem. They make the environment difficult for fungi. I have not heard of fungicides that have successfully solved this problem, so I recommend cutting the bulbs and making them as uncomfortable as possible. But this was odd: I visited the website of the Azalea Society of America recently. In one web page on this subject, they simply said there were no effective fungicides. And on another web page, they said to collect the blisters by hand, destroy the affected leaves or try to spray the leaves with one of these products and then determine if they help or not: Bayleton ( a systemic fungicide developed by the company Bayer), Ferbam (a chemical that is often used as a fungicide), Captan (a former systemic fungicide) or a fungicide based on fixed copper. They recommended starting spraying at the end of the flowering period and continuing at 2-3 week intervals until mid-June. So try these sprays to see if they help or not (they may only help to control a bad infestation, not to cure the problem).