Desert Rose Not Growing

10 years ago

I was given a desert rose about a month and a half ago along with some other plants. At the time, it was blooming but had black fungus spots on the leaves and flowers. I used gardensafe multi spray and that seemed to cleared up, it put out some new flowers and those were clear. Then all the flowers dropped off, and all the older leaves turned yellow and got burnt looking spots and dropped off as well. I thought maybe I was overwatering it, so I eased up to once every 10 days or so and moved it to an indirect light area. Now nothing is happening. I regularly treat it with some gardensafe spray as another plant in the box the DS came in had spidermites. It does have an actual spider living on it, which I am leaving alone.
But there has been no new growth for a month, even the tiny baby leaves have not gotten bigger. They look nice and green and healthy tho. The plant could stand a repot, as the roots are coming out the bottom, but is this a bad time to repot? or is that what it is waiting for?

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Comments (7)

rcharles_gw (Canada)
10 years ago
Kateanne,
If you are able to post photo's it is usually a great advantage for others to see also how things look.
If you can it would be great.
Rick
kateanne
Original Author
10 years ago
I will have to tomorrow, my home computer broke, and the site wont let me upload pics from my Ipad, so I have to take pics and sneak them on my work computer. :P
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kateanne
Original Author
10 years ago
Here is what it looked like about a week after bringing it home. Excuse the lizard.
kateanne
Original Author
10 years ago
And here it was last night, I moved most of my plants indoors for a few days as we were expecting Flossie to cause problems and are still seeing a lot of rain.
rcharles_gw (Canada)
10 years ago
kate,
It looks to me to be a plant started from a cutting? For the size of the base of plant which is what we speak of having a caudex, this one does not have.
The pot does not look to be to big, but I may need a repot job with new free draining mix. It would not hurt it now.
The leaves on it in last photo look fine.
Rick
PRO
AdeniumRose Company LLC
10 years ago
Hi Kate:

As Rick said it is not a seed grow or a grafted based on the image. The trunk indicates that is from a cutting so the caudex of the adenium is apparent. Many times when when a person does do too much (fertilization, pesticide, etc.) it will cause the adenium plant to go into shock and will take a few months to recover (loose leave, not grow much , etc.). Also, when you fertilize make sure you use time release very low nitrogen fertilizer (1..2 a year at the most) The sunlight through the shade is not enough for the desert rose plant it's too filtered. Either open the shades to get more light or get a grow light (Led grow lights work well). If you can re-pot the adenium now and I would use a shallow wide pot and force the roots to spread just below the top of the soil to start to make the caudex to grow. The pot you are using is too deep for the to grow the adenium well.

Here is a link that might be useful: AdeniumRose Company
kateanne
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks, both of you! It is only temporarily indoors until the wind and rain stop ripping the fronds off the palm trees. The blinds are usually open, but there were workers cleaning up the storm debris right outside. I will repot it in a shallower pot, the pot its in was only about 3 inches full of soil, so I will be shopping for a bonsai pot this weekend, I guess. Will it be sturdy in 2'' or so of soil? and should I trim the roots to fit a shallower pot or try to squash them in?