Azalea

[nurvbonsai]

Greetings,

I had high hopes for this Azaela Bonsai. I bought it in the spring, had already flowered, started to eventually wilt and fall off as they do. Months later it’s browning now after an intense summer heat. This is my second go at Azalea and I’m not sure if my environment is going to work for it. Any other thoughts? Thank you.

 

[rockm]

Yeah. It’s dead. Likely not the environment. Probably soil and care issues. I’m in the same zone as you and have satsukis that are thriving

However I killed azaleas for years before I got the knack of keeping them. Watering is a big issue as is soil. It’s easy to overwater and soggy soil kill them easily as does overfertilization.

 

[nurvbonsai]

Yeah. It’s dead. Likely not the environment. Probably soil and care issues. I’m in the same zone as you and have satsukis that are thriving

However I killed azaleas for years before I got the knack of keeping them. Watering is a big issue as is soil. It’s easy to overwater and soggy soil kill them easily as does overfertilization.

We had some really intense heats so I was watering every day and fertilizing with liquid fert every other watering as per instructions.

 

[rockm]

We did as well. I tried to control the amount of water since they weren’t actually using a lot. I keep them in shade in the afternoon after three to fours hours of morning sun. I learned the hard way that it’s pretty easy to overwater these particularly if they’re in kanuma azaleas are not heavy feeders. The regimen you’re using sounds like overkill to me.

 

[Glaucus]

It looks quite dead. When the leaves are crisp, one cannot see the coloration of the leaves anymore, or judge how vigorous this years growth was.
Likely, it got both too hot and too dry. But if you fertilize too much, the roots will die and it will look as if it had not been watered, even if you did.
Do you have pictures of how it looked like 1 or 2 months ago?

Like Rockm says, azaleas are light feeders. Liquid fertilizer is good, but you can use 1/10th or 1/20th the recommended dilution, and apply it more often.
I like to keep EC values below 0.8 mS/cm in terms of conductivity/number of charged fertilizer ions, assuming it is a non-urea liquid fertilizer.
Tap water can often already be 0.4 or 0.6 mS/cm, before you add fertilizer.
Probably 0.8 to 1.2 mS/cm is still fine, but I like to play it safe when it comes to fertilizer. Especially if the weather is hot and drought stress is an issue because watering once a day might not be quite enough.