azalea dieoff...why???

Hi everyone, this is my first post and I am in my second season of gardening. I planted an azalea bush 4 weeks ago and it was in bloom, then lost all of its flowers, and looked nice and healthy and bright green. A week ago it started to wilt and shrivel. So I watered it more than I was watering it and before I knew it, it was completely brown. Is it dead? or could it come back? Thanks for any help. Brian

Not sure Brian. Azaleas are prone to a disease called pythium blight, but only a tissue test would confirm that. Otherwise I really don't have an answer.

Planting things in the heat of summer can be very stressful, the blooms dropping is perfectly normal when you transplant something, and then the way it dried up and died suggests to me that it probably wasn't getting enough water. Or possibly too much water, if you have clay soil and you were watering it a lot that's a possibility as well, the symptoms of over and under watering are very similar. So my guess is transplant shock combined with the wrong amount of water. If the plants had been in the ground a couple of years I'd suspect something else like a soil fungus, but since you just planted them that's less likely.

Hi Zoomaster, can only give you general things for Azalias, that is, they like an acidic soil, they like dapple shade and cool roots, if I were to take a blind guess, then you have planted it in too much sun, not enough water at the roots for a new planted Azalia, and the soil has'nt enough acid, to change these conditions, you need to select a shaded area, dig a hole 2 time wider and deeper than the pot the plant came in, add to this some peat/leaf mould to the bottom of the planting hole, and as you backfill the hole, add more leafmould to the soil from the hole, give the plant plenty water and if you live in a hot dry area for summer, give a good mulch around it, if you have a clay soil, you need to add lots of compost/leafmould to the soil or the plants will get cold wet roots in cool/cold weather, and in summer, the soil gets a crust on it therefore the water just sheds off the top and cant penetrate the roots, also with clay soil, the plants dont get air and neutriens from the soil, so the flowers show the stress first, then the foliage. if you transplant the Azalia now, then it may have a slight chance of recovery, but it will take a while to get more foliage if it does indeed recover, so good luck. WeeNel.

It's been so, so hot and dry in much of the Mid atlantic here, I think the watering went wrong somehow, like ecrane said. It's very hard to deal with - don't feel bad! but don't replace it till fal or spring!

Thanks for the help everyone!!

My azealas have dried up and are dying too. I'm guessing that perhaps it's just a result of the dry season.