sick Azalea help

[Snager]

I got this little tree from a local grower on Sunday and it is now Friday. i noticed when i bought it ($50) that it was yellow with brown spots. the grower had the trees in direct all day south facing sun. we're in dallas texas. kept it in apl i believe. I brougt it home sarturday and put it in dappled light with 2 hours noon sun then full shade, watered every dat. by Thursday, i noticed the leaves were drying up and turnimg more yellow, some with brown tips so I decided to repot. mixed the old soil with some organic mix and bare rooted the base (trying to train for exposed root). the roots looked fiberous and healthy. the top ring of white grid is filled with a shohin mix and minced spagum moss.

what am I doing wrong?

 

[Glaucus]

It must have been chlorotic/stressed when you bought it. Honestly. 50 USD for a chlorotic azalea this size/quality is not good.
All you can do it keep it mostly shaded, moist not wet, and hope it somehow recovers. This will be slow, taking at least a year.
Or ask your money back.

For training exposed roots, you need a enclosed tube that is way taller. No air pruning. Make it at leach 5 inches tall. But, you need a healthy plant for that.
When training other species, you mighty want a grating to air prune. But for azaleas, you don't.
Arguably, you could try a thinner tube. But if you try it once with your first azalea, this diameter is fine.

 

[Snager]

should i remove the mesh and just burry the roots up to the trunk? is the soil mix being more organic okay?
and: yeah i paid a lot for a sick tree but I don't think he wanted to sell it to me. i just thought it would make a nice small pre-mame, which are hard to find. but the other seedling i got from him is growing, not wilting and stressing out more.

i have had some luck working with gumpo azalea from the grocery store so i was confident i could nurse this satsuki back to health. but im losing faith by the hour. :/

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Gosh, this is a really stressed azalea.

Based upon experience, azaleas in this condition in can be brought back to health, yet it’s iffy.

Can’t really recommend much more than @Glaucus mentioned.

Add media around screen. Moss the surface. Keep out of the, sun keep cool and mist the leaves up to 4x a day,

Best
DSD sends

 

[Gabler]

If you're not using kanuma soil and your water is hard, the azalea won't be able to take up certain nutrients. However, I've seen success in bad soil and bad water using Holly Tone to bring down the pH. It was just one time with one azalea, so take it with a grain of salt, but lowering the pH might be the key to fixing the problems you're seeing.

 

[Snager]

thanks for the hints, guys

we had a ton of rain last weekend so i let the tree just soak it up. it actually seemed like it was perking up a bit. i got the Hollytone and applied it on Monday at half strength. I noticed then that the tree had begun to wilt. I had skipped watering for one day because of all the rain.

i moved it where it would get even less sun and watered only lightly. but it continues to wilt AND turn brown on the tips.

what's going on with this guy?

 

[Glaucus]

May be the hollytone. When an azalea is nutrient deficient like this, it is very tempting to give it a whole bunch of fertilizer. But I have noticed myself that this rarely works out well.
I even had trouble when I used distilled water, added fertilizer, checked the EC. The solution is to put it in good soil, low stress, and wait a year for it to grow better roots and/or sort out it's nutrient deficiency.
Prevention is usually better than finding a cure. It can be cured, but those leaves will in my experience never look good. The goal would be for the leaves next year to come out dark green.

If it is wilting and the tips are turning brown, and it happens acute after adding fertilizer, then that a dead giveaway of fertilizer burn.

 

[Snager]

May be the hollytone. When an azalea is nutrient deficient like this, it is very tempting to give it a whole bunch of fertilizer. But I have noticed myself that this rarely works out well.
I even had trouble when I used distilled water, added fertilizer, checked the EC. The solution is to put it in good soil, low stress, and wait a year for it to grow better roots and/or sort out it's nutrient deficiency.
Prevention is usually better than finding a cure. It can be cured, but those leaves will in my experience never look good. The goal would be for the leaves next year to come out dark green.

If it is wilting and the tips are turning brown, and it happens acute after adding fertilizer, then that a dead giveaway of fertilizer burn.

thankyou. the wilting had begun before I added the holytone. i will baby the tree and move it back and forth between the sunny spot and dry spot of my yard every day. as the new wilting started a day after heavy rain, I'm afraid it's rootrot. lesson learned about buying expensive sickly trees.