Sunday, July 29, 2007

What's Your Opinion???

Here's a challenge for everyone! Look at the photos and think about what's going on with these plants. Contact the blog with your ideas. ALL IDEAS ARE HELPFUL .... to start conversations, generate solutions to this and other problems, and to help others that might be having the same things happen to their plants. Simply reply to the blog. For HELP commenting, click on link.
What causes the center leaves of a recently potted plant to die off? Forget pests, this has nothing to do with them. I can repot 30 plants and after a couple weeks will notice that on two or three the center leaves have turned brown and died off. Now keep in mind that the leaves do start to grow then turn mushy brown from the tip to the stem.

More often than not the entire center will be lost. The plant itself is still healthy, but with no center, it will form multiple crowns or produce suckers. Okay, you still have a plant with which to start over from leaves or suckers. But it would have been much nicer to have the original plant that is already a good size in the first place.


I think Yukako has a chance of making it. Ma’s Winter Moon is very iffy. Sora's Munchie and Lyon’s Fortune Teller look very pathetic. It can be with any color foliage, variegated or not. Plus the plant keeps right on blooming if it has any possibility of producing leaves before the center dries up completely. By the way, there was no evidence of “orange crud” on the plant.

So, does this have to do with transplant shock? Is it because it was planted too deep? What?

Many thanks to Barb W. for the article and the great shots of the plants! Remember, send in comments!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would guess that the plants are stressed from heat.

Anonymous said...

What about fertilizer burn?

NSAVC Twin Cities said...

Both good points! Any others???

Anonymous said...

I think it is a combination of heat and fertilizer burn. The heat would produce smaller leaves and the fertilizer burn is shown on the edges of the leaves. I don't think it is a bug problem.

Anonymous said...

I had the same thing and finally found out it was a mite problem. I treated them and ended up with the burned leaves from the treatment. Then I threw the plants out.

Anonymous said...

One of the things I'm going to try to watch in the future is potting too deep. This is something on which Retha commented years back when we were discussing a like problem. But keep sending ideas for reference. If one doesn't work, hopefully the next one will.

Anonymous said...

You have plants that are very stressed. We here in Georgia have that problem all the time with heat but you sure overfertilized them. You could have a minor bug. I never heard of planting too deep.

NSAVC Twin Cities said...

Oh, this is excellent to have great exchange of ideas!

I was wondering about pH.... could the new soil be different from the starter potting mix? Could it be the city water and it's pH???

Anonymous said...

The only bewildering thing is the Yukako and Ma's are two of twelve convention bought plants which repotted at the same time the last week of May. The Sora and Lyon's are two of 35 that were repotted at the same time mid-July. So, out of almost 50 plants, this happened to only four (this time). That's why is almost seems like something I did specifically with these plants. OR are some plants just more susceptible to certain problems?

SillyGirl said...

Hi there,

Judging from the brown substance on the leaves, I think these plants are suffered from fertilizer salts.

I have a few plants suffered got similar symptom even I give all my avs the same dosage of fertilizer. It can be because some varieties are sensitive to fertilizer.

Next time if you find similar, try wash the leaves with brown substance under slow running tap water. It works for me.

Happy growing,