I'm brand new here and trying to get on top of the gardening around my house. I have a few plants that are very sparse - the worst is the blue potato bush. There are two, one is grown as a shrub the other staked as a tree. Both are full of branches that only have one or two green leaves at the very tip - so they look like a pile of dead plant with a little green on the very outside.

There is also a mint shrub of some sort (it has the square stem, opposite pairs of leaves, and of course a mint smell but I can't identify it further). It looks dreadful because there are so many brown branches all over the place and only green near the ends of all that woody stuff. It looks like a giant weed.

Please help. I don't know whether to cut back the plants severely to encourage fuller growth (and if so, how exactly) or whether with enough TLC the branches that are there can eventually fill out so there is more green than brown.

I'm in coastal So. Ca - I think in the Sunset book it is Zone 23 but I'm not sure if that's the same zone system you are using here. (Did I mention I'm new to this? ;) )

Thank you!!
Sarah

I don't know of any mint that can't be pruned down to the ground, especially at the end of the growing season, and not have it bounce back.

Without smothering the plant, you can sprinkle compost over the plant and then water it with a gentle spray of water to get in down to the roots. Mint has a lot of surface roots, usually, and will respond to being fed this way.

If you're growing mint (Mentha) then it sounds that at least part of your garden gets seasonal ponding - regardless of what happens in summer.

On the other hand: if you're growing an Aussie mint bush (Prostanthera)- which has little leaves and dainty mauve or white flowers usually - cut back with care. Stay out of the old wood (a different colour from the newer wood). You can mulch it with compost or bark, but take care with any fertiliser - it has to be really LOW in phosphorus. High nitrogen, moderate potassium. The Osmocote brew I have for 'native' plants is N17-P1.6 -K8.7.

Depending on what you want to grow - feeding the soil with compost is probably the most cost effective thing you can do for most plants. Just know it can take a few weeks to show the effects (sometimes longer). Compost or humus - plants that have rotted so far you can't tell what they were, and it looks like lovely soft, dark dirt - helps the soil to hold moisture, makes it easy for roots to forage out for supplies, makes it easy for worms to work, and the soil to warm up in spring. Without it, you can add fertiliser by the ton every year and see less and less return from it. With it - you spend so much less on fertiliser and water and see far more result.