Half of my rose of sharon is not growing leaves. Upon inspection I found some kind of rot or something, maybe from piling snow on it over the winter....I really want to save this bush but I don't know how to proceed. Do I cut off the dead parts...Or is this something I can treat with a fungicide? I don't know, what does it look like to you?
Another picture
Hi tracylotus, that looks beyond treatment with even fungiside, hard to tell if it is deseased or as you say, rotted by being under snow and then thawing out, whatever it is, I would get a small hand saw with a narrow blade, and cut out ALL the damaged wood, so you need to cut below the damage, if you do this, make a small cut under the branch, then on the top, then as you cut, (AT AN ANGLE SO THAT MORE NOISTURE DONT SIT ON THE CUT) this will stop the wood splitting way below where you want to cut, you may have to be quite brutal to rid all the damaged wood, but it will also let air into the plant so that IF it is some kind of fungus, it will not get to spread further,
Once you have done this, I would take a bit if the hight off the plant to give it a chance to recover, it might not look too good this year however, it will get a chance to recover for next year.
Examine the wood you remove and you will either see what has rotted the branches OR you will know not to shovel the snow over the plant again, either way, your plant right now open to anything that fancies attacking it, so you might loose it just by doing nothing. Tip, just encase it is a fungus, dont use the same blade to shorten your shrub as you may spread whatever it is, or maybe take the hight off first.
Hope this helps, good luck.
WeeNel.
Thank you so much. My biggest fear is whatever it is spreading. It makes sense that it is now vulnerable to whatever might want to attack it. Unfortunately, the main branch is affected most...boo hoo! Someone at work told me to put something called tree tar on it after I cut...is that necessary?
I wouldn't put anything over the cut, I think that can actually be bad for the plant, and definitely isn't beneficial.
I think the old wood (in the middle usually) die eventually and it just needs to be cut out.
But you should have plenty of young shoots.
I cut out all the dead limbs and inspected the branches...there was no sign of any bugs or fungus. I left the branches with leaves alone. Hopefully i won't loose any more.
I've noticed around town, some of the Rose of Sharons I admired, are now completely dead. I guess I should consider myself lucky. I guess it must've been the bad weather.
Tracy, I did the same thing a few months ago. All my plants were doing poorly and I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I was doing wrong....reading everything I could find, trying out different treatments for what I thought was the problem. My daughter took me for a walk around the island and low and behold, everyone was having similar problems! We had gotten some extremely high winds blowing the salt all over the island two months earlier than expected and all the plants were reacting to the change by pouting I guess. When I stopped fidgeting with them, my darlings finally calmed down and returned to beauty. So now before I panic, I look around. Ain't nature a peach!?
You know, it got really warm...70's. Everything started to grow, then it snowed...a lot!
I was suprised to see some of my perennials that had begun to grow were dead when the snow melted.
Hopefully my bush makes it!
Yup, sometimes there is just no getting around Mother Nature. No negative waves now, sending positive energy your way to share with your R of S. Give her lots of love and tell her she still looks lovely, and pretty soon, she will!
I have a rose of sharon too that was quite a tall tree when I bought my house 6 years ago. It has been bautiful until recently. It had two large appeared to be either struck by lighting or split or something near the base. I removed one of the bases that appeared completely damaged and pruned back the other half considerably before winter. I also surronded the base with large rocks to prevent any critters from getting at the base and assist with drainage. This spring it still had not had any leaves as of June and cutting off a few branches, they were quite dry. I assumed I had lost the battle and sadly began cutting off most of the branches. I'm left with the main trunk and two large main branches that were too big to cut down with clippers. Now it is the start of July and suddenly little green sprouts are popping up all over what I removed. Now what? I had lost hope this would ever come back and now it appears I crippled it. The area gets good water and such - the garden near it is growing wildly! The trunk still doesn't seem all that stable though. Is this the type of tree that if I cut it completely back will sprout fresh? What should I do? I'd love to save it!! Thank-you!
This message was edited Jul 5, 2008 2:05 PM
Can you post a picture? It might also help if you start a new thread for it, this one is over a year old and your problem is a little different than the original one, so you'll probably get a lot more people to notice and comment if you make your own thread.
you need to remove the old woody, damaged wood, from the center. that is old wood and just basically gets old, dies and rots. yes you can cut them back. I don't think you can kill them unless of course intentionally, even then they would be hard.
I ended up cutting more than half the main branches off (the ones that appeared damaged) and then took it down to about three feet in height. This spring I have at least 5 new shoots comming up from the ground and the rest of it is as healthy as can be.
Now that you took out all the old wood it will probably really explode! they seed rather prolifically and the new growth really grows fast.
flutterbyte, rose of sharons are tough. Cut the old damaged wood out. You could cut it all the way to the ground and it would grow 3-4 feet the next year. I had one next to my house when we bought it, and it was leaning side ways. Well, everyone one and their brother stalked that baby. The next year the wind tore it in half. So i cut it down and transplanted it to another location. It did well then my husband got the idea to puill it out. The following year, from the old roots sprung a new bush. Now, I'm totally sick of this plant so I transplant it once again and hope it dies in the barren, dry ground. Well, as you can guess that thing is huge, 2 years later and full of flowers. So, tell it you wish it would just die and to prove you wrong next year it will be 10 ft tall.
