I just moved into my house in January, and the powderpuff tree in the backyard looks terrible. The leaves are all droopy and faded, and there's not that many puffs on it. It had more puffs back in January, even though the leaves looked bad - but there are fewer puffs on it now, and the leaves look worse. I'm having trouble figuring out what's wrong with my internet searches, but I think it may just be lack of water. It hasn't rained much this winter, and I have no idea when the last time it was fertilized. We've also had some periods of wind and cold weather. The loquat tree next to it looks pretty awesome, aside from split fruits from a cold snap a couple weeks ago. I tried watering it for about 20 minutes with the hose on full blast last week, and I sort of expected it to bounce back like a potted plant, but that may have just been pipe dreams.
If it's just underwatered, what would be a good watering schedule to try and get it on?
What would be the best fertilizer to get for it?
Thanks!
My Calliandra (Red Powderpuff) looks terrible...
If it's a big, established bush it probably doesn't need a lot of water. Once a week max should do it, I would think. There is a big gorgeous calliandra across the street from us, on a lot with an unoccupied house. In 4 years we've lived here I am sure it has never, ever been watered and it is beautiful. That being said, it is in the shade of a big oak tree, too. Is yours in the full sun, by any chance? Did maybe someone cut down a tree that might have been shading it?
A picture of it would be helpful.
Elaine
It is in full sun, but it's also part of a group of large shrub/trees. There's three large plantings all about the same size right next to one another in one corner of the yard, a loquat tree, the puffball, and some other large treeshrub I don't know the name of. Oh, and there's a bunch of bromeliads hiding sort of under and behind them. Makes me wonder if there's just not too much big stuff right next to one another.
I'll take a pic as soon as I can get out there when the sun is still up!
Thanks!
Here's some pictures...
First one is a big shot of the clump of plantings in the corner. On my side of the fence, theres a Loquat on the left, the puff in the middle, and something I don't know the name of to the left.
Second is a closer up shot of the puffball
Third is the thing I don't know the name of
Fourth is the bromeliad patch right behind the puffball.
On the other side of the fence behind the loquat in the neighbor's yard, there's some jasmine vine invading my yard, and another big tree thing I can't ID
Since it doesn't look totally dead, I might just keep my fingers crossed - but if there's a chance some fertilizer would help I'd like to do that. I forgot to mention that my house is fairly close to a canal, that tree patch is probably only 50-100 yards away from the canal with nothing between the patch and the canal. So since it's so big, maybe it's been able to survive on what groundwater it can reach?
The other possibility is that it is just finishing its bloom cycle for the year. I believe they are fall to winter bloomers here. It will probably drop the rest of its flowers, then begin putting on new leaves for the summer and burst into bloom again in the fall. I checked out the one across the street, and it is dropping its flowers now, too.
I'd give it a handful of slow-release pelleted fertilizer, (I like Osmocote) and make sure it's getting watered once a week or so until the dry season is over (June). Fertilizer should be sprinkled around the bush as far out as the branches reach, not just in by the trunks.
Watch out for that jasmine vine! It will become a serious nuisance climbing in and twining over all your trees and shrubs. They're very aggressive. Also if you're in there cutting it back, wear clothes you don't care about, hat, long sleeves and long pants because when you cut it, the white sap that drips out of the stems is irritating to your skin, and stains your clothes.
The bromeliads are great! One of the best low-maintenance plants you can grow here, for shade. If you thin them out by removing some of the biggest (oldest) ones - choose the ones to remove that have already bloomed - they will spread and bloom twice a year. They're epiphytes so they don't get much of their nutrients from the soil. A terrific groundcover in the shade. When you go to thin them out you'll see that they're basically just sitting on top of the soil.
Couldn't really see the other shrub well enough to guess at it's ID. If you can send another pic taken when it's not so sunny that might help. It looks like maybe ligustrum, viburnum, or maybe a camellia. Did it have flowers?
Here's some pic of that other common mystery tree. I used a real camera instead of just my goofy phone...
Hm, looks like a ligustrum to me. They are an ok small, slow-growing landscape tree. They don't have nice flowers (tiny, white, smell terrible) just that nice, shiny dark green foliage. Very easy care.They take well to being pruned so you could cut back any branches that are crowding the powderpuff plant.
If you do think that corner is too crowded, that's the one I'd remove. Here are some pics of mine. (meh . . )
sorry for jumping in between the convo but am i the only one that thinks the ligustrums used in house foundation plantings (ex: one on each side of the garage) almost never grow similar? i think im crazy sometimes but i always see them with one slower than the other - mine do the same thing!
You're probably right, since they're so slow growing, it's tough to prune them so they will look the same. It's better to use a faster-growing shrub or small tree for that.
I'm not too big on symmetry, myself. I favor a lush, natural look. This house had a quite formal Japanese style garden when we moved in - more suited to the restrained growth of the ligustrums. It's more of a tropical jungle now.
I think you're right ID-ing that tree as ligustrum, it's tough to figure out which one though. When I looked at the ones in the Plantfiles, they all said they were shrubs. The one in the picture above is about 12' tall (that's a five-foot fence in the picture) and there's eight of them along that back fence. One of them has got to be almost 20 feet tall! Those are some "shrubs"!
It says on some of the websites that they take well to pruning. Can you hack them from the top to keep them around 8 feet tall, or would that wreck the plant?
Ligustrums can get quite large. If you post some pics of yours on the ID forum, someone can probably tell you which species yours is.
I think they're mostly used as shrubs, and pruned to stay small. Mine in the pics above are probably 12 or 14ft. tall. The house is 50 years old so they could have been here a long time.
Pruning, hmm. I think once these have grown up into the sort of tree form that yours in the picture is, it's not going to do well if you cut the whole top of it off. It's either going to just die, or it will grow dense bushy branches along the top and look awful. I'd advise you to try it with just one branch/trunk back by the fence (out of sight) and see what happens. Problem being that they are slow-growing so it might just look like a skeleton for a couple of years after you decapitate it. Or die.
Rule of thumb when pruning any plant is never to cut off more than 1/3 of the leafy growth at any one time so you don't endanger the plant's health. If you started with a small, new plant you could prune it as it grew to stay looking like a shrub or make a hedge i.e. bushy and with leaves most of the way down to the ground. But you're starting with big mature plants.
If what you want is a privacy hedge, it would be better to plant something else, like sweet viburnum or podocarpus. Or train that jasmine along the fence (but keep it out of the trees on your side).
Ligustrums are really fast growers around here, I took some of the larger ones and limbed them up like trees. It created a lot of real estate underneath so I could plant other things.
So I guess I'm "stuck" with tree-like ligustrums. I'm not ripping them out, because what privacy the do still provide is pretty important - and plus, that'd be a humongous job that I don't want to do!
I think I'll just clean them up and go after the bromeliads that are kinda growing "wild". The sharp spines on the broms make for a nice "people-keeper-outer" plant, plus they're super pretty when they bloom and do well in the shady spots. I'll just dig up some of the thicker clumps and spread 'em out...
jumping in here late but you can always trim that Calliandra way back. the ones in our neighborhood froze to the ground year before last and they are all big and beautiful again. flowering is over now. they are prone to pests and this is another reason for cutting them back...gives them a good rejuvenation.