Shady's Gardenias

[ShadyStump]

Thanks for all the advice!
I have three or four that are affected, so I'm going to try a couple different things this weekend on different ones to see which treatment does what.

 

[ShadyStump]

So I've left the strongest of the sick ones alone except for the routine watering. This is my control, and my backup in case treatment somehow kills the others.
The other three, each got doses this morning of either Epsom salt solution, white vinegar solution, or acid fert at roughly double the strength I've been doing including hitting the foliage with it. These three have also been moved out of the tiny greenhouse to where most of my other tropicals are. The greenhouse treatment was ineffective on it's own, and has been getting crazy hot some days.


These are all the stuff I had on hand, and I figured would confirm or debunk the soil pH theory within a matter of a couple weeks. I forgot I was doing this this morning, so all solutions were applied wet, so I'm hitting each of them again tomorrow morning.

As a general care note, I think all my gardenias have been getting just enough water and fert to keep going, seeing as how they've not bloomed at all, so I'm upping my game there. The weather isn't entirely out of character for this climate and time of year, but it hasn't helped things, and the dry heatwave in June definitely had a negative effect. I've only spotted a couple flower buds starting all summer, but they all dried up and died.

I've learned so much already this year I expect great things next summer.
It'll probably turn out to be great new challenges, but that's cool.

 

[Darth Masiah]

I've been in love with the Japanese shohin gardenias for years. when i moved into my new place there was some massive bushes in the yard, so finally started some cuttings last year. never started a thread cause it didn't look like anybody was interested in them. using inorganic soil mix, 6.0 ph avg' city water everyday unless it rained, 202020 ferts (1tsp per gal) every 2 weeks. old wood cuttings root, but nothing compared to the mass of roots you get from first year shoots.

 

[ShadyStump]

I've been in love with the Japanese shohin gardenias for years. when i moved into my new place there was some massive bushes in the yard, so finally started some cuttings last year. never started a thread cause it didn't look like anybody was interested in them. using inorganic soil mix, 6.0 ph avg' city water everyday unless it rained, 202020 ferts (1tsp per gal) every 2 weeks. old wood cuttings root, but nothing compared to the mass of roots you get from first year shoots.

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This is one I've been curious about for a while: do the regular alkali based ferts still work as well so long as the soil itself is acidic?

I have a fistful of cuttings going now that mostly seem to be doing alright.
I decided to start the thread as much for my own benefit - tracking progress, notes on the learning curve, etc - as anyone else's. Sometimes people have no idea they were interested in something until they see it, and I like them well enough that it was worth my sharing with others.
You should go ahead and start that thread. You always have interesting things going on, and I'd love to have some comparison for mine.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

@ShadyStump - can't find it, so maybe I'm hallucinating, but I will throw this out into the "bonsai-verse" for the benefit of any who did not know.

Someone mentioned using Fuller's Earth in their potting mix. Fuller's Earth is one of several types of clay, most commonly attapulgite, which in the most common ( least refined) form is about 25 % calcium carbonate. This makes Fuller's Earth an alkaline and strongly buffering addition to a potting mix. A very bad choice for a plant that likes acidic soils.

This is the reason I don't add random clay products to my mix. Turface seems inert but other brands, if they have Fuller's earth, are likely to have calcium carbonate as a major unintended contaminant.

Use pumice, not clay in your potting mix and you won't have trouble with acid loving plants.

 

[ShadyStump]

@ShadyStump - can't find it, so maybe I'm hallucinating, but I will throw this out into the "bonsai-verse" for the benefit of any who did not know.

Someone mentioned using Fuller's Earth in their potting mix. Fuller's Earth is one of several types of clay, most commonly attapulgite, which in the most common ( least refined) form is about 25 % calcium carbonate. This makes Fuller's Earth an alkaline and strongly buffering addition to a potting mix. A very bad choice for a plant that likes acidic soils.

This is the reason I don't add random clay products to my mix. Turface seems inert but other brands, if they have Fuller's earth, are likely to have calcium carbonate as a major unintended contaminant.

Use pumice, not clay in your potting mix and you won't have trouble with acid loving plants.

No worries. I can get something next week I think.

The fuller's earth I have some of these in is the calcined form, Tractor Supply SafeTSorb. If I recall the bag said a pH of 7.1 to 8.2. I mixed it with Coco coir, peat and coffee grounds to lower the pH, and it seems to have worked because the gardenias in this mix are looking alright. They're still not blooming, but I think this is the dry hot weather as much as anything. 90s every day this week, and RH between 11% and 25%.

 

[ShadyStump]

So a nasty 10 or 15 minute bluster yesterday handed us an inch of rain amid VERY high winds, and knocked the power out for a few hours.
My little greenhouse blew over, and I looked to have lost most of the cuttings I had going.
Went pawing through the debris this morning, though, and was able to hopefully salvage a few. 5 gardenia cuttings that had rooted, as well as a couple each ficus benjamina, rose of Sharon and bougainvillea, and one lonely Barbados cherry, all with roots or strong callusing. The greenhouse was righted and reassembled, and all replanted in trays.
Here's hoping the roots didn't dry out too much over night. Didn't notice any wilt, at least on the ones that still had leaves attached.

 

[waydeo]

Shady sorry to hear about your greenhouse. Do gardenias drop their leaves in winter ?
It's cool in Colorado compared to northwest/ Rome georgia, it's been up to 100-106 temp with heat indices up to 118 ,40%-90% humidity for about 10 weeks.

 

[ShadyStump]

Shady sorry to hear about your greenhouse. Do gardenias drop their leaves in winter ?
It's cool in Colorado compared to northwest/ Rome georgia, it's been up to 100-106 temp with heat indices up to 118 ,40%-90% humidity for about 10 weeks.

Well I guess I shouldn't worry about temps in my greenhouse any more. I'm in southern Colorado, so it's hot and dry in the summer, fairly mild winters in my area, but February is always brutally cold. The rest winter is essentially extreme freeze/thaw cycles. It could be 70F during the day, then drop into the teens or 20s at night for a week or straight at times.
The two varieties I have I'm assuming are purely tropical, though I'm thinking of testing that on a cutting this year just to confirm. I understand there are Korean native varieties that are fully deciduous and lose their foliage and go dormant for winter, so it's possible I could have one of those. I really just don't know.

 

[bwaynef]

We got down to 6ºF one recent winter and I noticed my landscape gardenias (that are evergreens usually) dropped leaves. By spring they were back in leaf and had flowers as well.

 

[penumbra]

We got down to 6ºF one recent winter and I noticed my landscape gardenias (that are evergreens usually) dropped leaves. By spring they were back in leaf and had flowers as well.

That's interesting. I know of no gardenia that could survive that here in my zone. Maybe someday someone will have a cultivar that will but they better get up on it, I won't be around forever.

 

[ShadyStump]

I can easily imagine some scenarios where this could be possible, even for a staunchly tropical tree, especially if it's larger and in the ground near the house. I don't imagine it stayed that temp for long, though, which is the key factor I think.
Can they handle a solid freeze of a few days? Can they handle a ground freeze?

I don't imagine the latter to be true, and that's what's required for life in a pot.
Still, it's worth sacrificing a cutting to get an idea where the lines are this winter.

 

[penumbra]

Still, it's worth sacrificing a cutting to get an idea where the lines are this winter.

Absolutely it is.

 

[waydeo]

Mine in big pots by my pool got bit by frost and died back but restricted.

 

[waydeo]

Dang spell check. I meant to say they came back after being defoliated by the late frost.

 

[Carol 83]

So a nasty 10 or 15 minute bluster yesterday handed us an inch of rain amid VERY high winds, and knocked the power out for a few hours.
My little greenhouse blew over, and I looked to have lost most of the cuttings I had going.
Went pawing through the debris this morning, though, and was able to hopefully salvage a few. 5 gardenia cuttings that had rooted, as well as a couple each ficus benjamina, rose of Sharon and bougainvillea, and one lonely Barbados cherry, all with roots or strong callusing. The greenhouse was righted and reassembled, and all replanted in trays.
Here's hoping the roots didn't dry out too much over night. Didn't notice any wilt, at least on the ones that still had leaves attached.

Do you need some more cuttings for your students?

 

[ShadyStump]

Dang spell check. I meant to say they came back after being defoliated by the late frost.

That's what I figured.

 

[ShadyStump]

Do you need some more cuttings for your students?

Most of what I lost were personal use.
Classes haven't even started for us quite yet, so I wouldn't be able to use them for a while.

PS: the couple of students who took trees home over the summer are reporting good things so far.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

All the gardenia with nice multiple petal flowers are sub-tropical, and while they can tolerate a few degrees of frost, a hard freeze becomes a problem especially as duration lengthens. An hour or two near zero is one thing, a full 8 or 10 hour night of zero F with roots freezing will be fatal. Gardenia jasminoides is definitely zone 8 at best. There are one or two cultivars advertised to be hardy to zone 6b when planted IN THE GROUND, but I am skeptical of these claims. There are some that are reliable in zone 7b, but colder than 7b and you are in the area horticulture "tall tales". Maybe true, maybe not. Site selection becomes critical in zone 7a and colder.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

the gardenia species and hybrids commonly available in North America are all based on Gardenia jasminoides , Gardenia thunbergia, Gardenia volkensii and Gardenia taitensis and that is pretty much it. The other 124 species are largely not available.

These above 4 species are all broadleaf evergreen trees or shrubs. Majority of Gardenia species are evergreen.