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Wisteria
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Posted by jwutzke AZ 9 [Snst 13]/ VT 5 (My Page) on Sun, Nov 8, 09 at 11:57
| We planted wisteria this past spring; it did great in the spring and was pretty much in statis during the summer (stopped growing, but stayed green and healthy-looking). For the last few weeks the leaves have looked a little wilty; I've given it supplemental water a couple times in the last couple weeks and it doesn't seem to react to that.
Is this just the wisteria heading into fall, getting ready to lose its leaves for the winter? I know it's deciduous, so I don't want to over-react - but thought I'd check. |
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RE: Wisteria
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They may just be getting ready for winter, but you should have noticed a growth spurt as soon as the nights started getting reasonable at the end of summer--in fact, I would expect that growth spurt to still be going on, as warm as it has been! A few things to check for:
Are you watering deeply and infrequently? Normal watering for a young Wisteria this time of year is once every 2 weeks, 7 gallons for every three feet of width of wall covered.
Have you fed it at all? In our desert soils even some legumes need regular feeding to thrive.
Was it planted deeper than in the original container? More than about 1/2" of dirt piled around the base of the stem often kills the inner bark there, eventually starving the roots to death, because the sugar from the leaves can't get past the dead bark to the roots. It's better to plant it a little high--with about 1/4" of the soil from the original container showing above ground.
Did you do any soil conditioning? Our iron-hard soils can often keep roots from escaping the original root ball, eventually strangling the plant with circling roots. Some of these problems are fixable, and some aren't. Hope yours are the fixable kind! : ) |
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