Gardenia original habitat is southern China. Therefore hot, humid and filtered sun will help it to produce lasting quality flower. Lots of Gardenia flowers are being imported from central America countries.

You need to find good potting mix and keep it moist but not in wet and air tight shoes. I have many kinds and hardly pay extra attention to them. They may need a pinch of chelated iron solution to have nice green leaves. It responses positively to proper fertilizer and water. Too much of both can cause damage.

Avoiding cold temperature in winter.

The radicans is still with me, but it's slowly but steadily losing leaves (they turn completely yellow and then dry up and fall off). I don't think I'm overwatering it because it's potted in CHCs, and that drains really well. Possibly I'm not keeping it moist enough?? I've also been giving it some Miracid in addition to the Osmocote and garden iron. The plant sits on an east-facing windowsill that gets good light for several hours in the morning. It hasn't gotten too cold in MA yet, and anyways the plant is inside all the time.

Does anyone have advice on the yellowing leaves? It's always the lowest leaves that go, but I'm worried about the fact that it continues to lose leaves. It also hasn't grown much (if at all) since I got it this summer.

Slow down with the fertilizer! Gardenias always shed some lower leaves in the fall and light levels fall. However, it sounds like you're losing more than a couple, and I think part of the problem is the potting mix -- gardenias don't want to be watered like orchids -- quick drench and then fast-draining mix -- I would take it out of its pot and look at the roots -- they may be shriveling from the rapid moisture changes, or they may be brown and rotting from too much watering in the fall, despite the chunky mix. I would repot it in a nice, peat-based potting mix with the CHC providing a quick-draining layer at the bottom, but gardenias need a richer, denser soil around their roots. Also, don't pot the root ball deeply; the roots tend to spread at the surface and don't like to be deeply buried. Let the top inch of the soil get barely dry before watering, and make sure it's not sitting in water for any length of time: moderation is the key.

Spraying the foliage daily may help with humidity and keep down spider mites, which are also a problem indoors starting about now. Gardenias need high humidity, so anything you can do to boost the humidity level inside will help.

Despite all this, gardenias can still be tough to pull through a northern winter indoors -- good luck, and keep us posted!

Jim

Hi, Jim! Thanks for the advice. I took the radicans out yesterday, and I think the roots are all right. At least, I saw a lot of white tips poking out of the bottom of the rootball, and I think white tips are usually a sign of new roots? The CHC mix I used actually is not too chunky (1/4" chips, and a reasonable amount of GrowCoir, which is a peatmoss substitute), and the moisture seemed fairly even throughout the pot. I had gone this route because I'd had mix left over from repotting citrus trees, and because I was worried that I might drown the gardenia (I have unfortunate tendencies towards overwatering). The mix was definitely damp in the root zone, but it was definitely not sopping wet. Since the roots look reasonable, I'll try keeping it in this mix for a little while longer to see if the plant can handle it.

IF the water was not the issue, possibly it was nutrition? I had no idea how much fertilizer to add to the admittedly completely non-nutritive CHC mix, so I had just put in "some" Osmocote and iron, hoping to err on the lower side. I then gave dilute Miracid because there was evidence from my citrus that they weren't getting enough food right away (esp. iron).

I did see a lots of little whitish bugs all through the pot! They are about 1 mm long, very thin, and look as if they might grow up to be flying adults. Needless to say, I didn't like this at all, so I ripped open a Mosquito Dunk and mixed the granules throughout the mix. Hopefully the Bt will take care of them.

Finally, I will do my best to keep the humidity up. It gets down to 60 F and 25% humidity in my apartment over the winter, which is hardly tropical.

Thanks again for all your advice!

It appears you baby-sit this baby! You should just relax, leave the baby alone for some time. Almost any plant will shed some leaves when the environment changes, from store to your house, from one room to the another. This is called stress. It can also have water stress, fertilizer stress, shade/sun stress....