I live in zone 7 and planted a gardenia which had been living outdoors in a pot into the ground. Now the leaves are turning yellow and dropping off the plant but there are lots of buds on the plant. What to do?
My Gardenia is losing it's leaves!
That's lack of water. Gardenias need a tremendous amount of water. When I first planted a gardenia hedge (1-2 ft high) in N. California, I had to water it every day or every other day to prevent that. Until I learned to mulch it.
The good news is once you start watering it enough, new leaves will eventually grow in all along the stems (the yellow guys will turn brown and fall off.)
Another source of yellow leaves in gardenias is iron deficiency, but in that case the leaves don't drop. And you will usually see green veins even though the leaf is basically yellow.
Actually, around here the Gardenias shed their lower/interior leaves as they make their buds in spring. It can look a little scary but it's probably fine. I'd post a picture to help us see exactly what you're describing.
As you can see in the picture, mine is doing the same thing. Only this plant has that problem and it started last year. The other two gardenias that are different kinds don't do that but I have been wondering if it is the location. I dug it up about a month ago and amended the soil around the roots raising it up some for better drainage when I realized it was sitting in clay soil. The rest of the bed wasn't like that but this spot was. Any ideas?
This one is doing fine at the end of the same bed.
My gardenia tree started losing it's leaves. I thought it needed water. It did because the water was not going down through all of the soil. I aerated it buy poking holes in the soil it but then it had too much water. So, I put it on it's side to drain while I drilled holes in the bottom of the pot. It now has lost all of it's leaves. Can it still be saved? What do I do??? PLEASE help!
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