japanese maple and hydrangea question

Help! I have recently had my house power washed and I think the workers used some kind of bleach and sand mixture to accomplish this. I rinsed off all the the plants around my house when I realized that I smelled bleach. But as a result of the power washing my house looks great, sadly my young japanese maple and hydrangea have dropped their leaves. Is their any hope for them???

The bleach and the sand mixture seeped into your soil. Unless you get your soil remediated, IMO you will lose some of your less established/sturdier plants :-( Even if you've rinsed them out, the mixture is still in the soil. Unless it rains and rains and it dilutes the concentration enough for your plants to survive it. I don't think forcefully flooding your soil to leach out the offending chemical is the way to go either since you'll run the risk of over watering and possibly offing your plants too. Sorry :-(

Still, I would try and water those two everyday in hopes of removing most of the bleach... Goodluck!

Thank you so much for replying. I have been watering them daily. I will continue to do so. Hopefully, I won't overwater them. Maybe they are in shock and I just have to support them for a while. I really hope they come back next year. Thanks again!!

Bleach actually degrades very quickly once it hits organic material like soil so it's long gone. Unfortunately one of the byproducts of it breaking down is salt which is not good for your soil, although I'm not sure if it would have left behind enough salt to do harm in the first place, and with the amount of water that's been through there since then you may have gotten rid of most of it by now so you probably don't need to do anything drastic to your bed, just keep watering on a regular basis for a while (although make sure not to overwater in the process).

The bleach spraying on the plants as they were washing the house can definitely cause damage so that could have made the leaves drop all on its own, and it's also possible between the volume of water that they got during the pressure washing plus you watering frequently since then that they're a bit overwatered now as well which can also cause leaves to drop off. I'd definitely keep an eye on the moisture level in the soil so that the problem doesn't get worse by giving them too much water.

Hopefully they will recover, plants are pretty tough, although I don't know if the initial damage from the bleach spraying on the leaves is something that plants can typically recover from or not. I know I've seen posts before from people who had the same thing happen, but I don't remember if any of them have ever posted back to say whether the plants recovered or not--hopefully someone who's had that experience will see your thread and post their experience.

Thanks for all the info. I will let everyone know if the plants come back.

You also ought to contact the company that did the work, and positively ID the chemical or chemicals used. Guessing that bleach was one of them is OK; it would really be useful to know for certain what the entire concoction was.

Guess what? I've noticed that the hydrangea has small new leaves and the japanese maple has a few buds!!! I'm thrilled. Thanks for everyones help and to mother nature for blessing me with a few sprinkles. Sincerely, Nat

Glad to hear that! I was hoping they would recover for you.