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| I have had several plants do this so far. For the most part the leaves/tops are wilty and the stems remain healthy looking. After this happened to one of them (all leaves were gone), I left it for about a week just to see what would happen - started sending out healthy looking suckers. A couple of the plants this has happened to were replacements for the first ones it happened to.
What the second pic doesn't show is once the leaves wilt, they start to get crispy with a bit of orange coloring to them. This has happened to plants that are in the ground (clay amended with compost), and in a container (half wine barrel, compost & Mel's mix). The seedlings still on the back patio have been out day/night and they are all fine (so not temps). The only thing they share in common really is the straw mulch (even the compost was different). Could the mulch be causing this? I sure hope not! I planted everything else out & mulched with straw yesterday. |
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| I doubt is is the mulch although it does seem quite early to be putting the mulch down, especially if you have been having the cooler and wetter than normal weather most of us have. Like planting out, mulching will be delayed this year by at least a couple of weeks. The most likely cause of the symptoms you describe is just the weather - overly cool, overly wet, retarded root development, slowed nutrient uptake, etc. If on the other hand you live in one of the isolated spots in the country having normal weather then I'd pull the mulch back from the plants and let the soil dry out well. Then hope that neither your mulch nor your compost contained any herbicides. Check with the sources for both. Dave |
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| It has been in the mid-80's here, a couple of 90 days (high desert though, nights are 44-50 - could wide temp swings do that?). I don't think wet weather is an issue, we're at 0.5" for the month, probably all we'll see. At what point do you recommend putting the mulch down? I didn't realize it shouldn't be put down right away. I was hoping to keep the weeds at bay (which are a HUGE problem for us), but I'll pull it back and see how they respond. |
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