Gardenia troubles....

I am not having good luck with gardenias. I see them growing in my area, thriving without much attention at all. I bought one this spring and all the leaves turned yellow, fell off, and it died.

I bought another this fall, planted it in a different location about 2 weeks ago. The leaves are turning yellow and starting to fall off.

For both plantings, I dug very large (2 feet across) holes, and amended with peat, humus, rotted manure. My soil is a sandy loam. The first location was morning to midday sun (east side of house) and the second location is on the north side, with filtered partial sun all day long. None of my other plantings have reacted this way. Just the gardenias. Are they just finicky?

They do tend to be finicky. You might go post on the fragrant gardening forum, there are a ton of people over there who grow them. I've had mine get yellowing leaves like that from too much water and from too little water, so it's hard to say which one it is. Could just be transplant shock too. I've also found that the amount of heat they get is important too--at my old house I had locations on the east side and on the west side of my house that both got pretty much the same amount of sun/shade, but the spot on the west side was always hotter, and the gardenia didn't do well there but did great on the east side of the house. It sounds to me like the location and the soil ought to be OK, so I'd add some Super Thrive to the water (a lot of people swear by it for making transplant shock less severe) and keep a close eye on the watering (make sure you don't give it too much, but don't let it dry out either) and hopefully it'll recover.

They need acidic soil and iron. Usually the yellow leaves are from lack of iron. I would hit them with ironite or something like that. Don't be afraid to put it on a little heavy.

There are different kinds of yellow leaves. If they're yellow except for having green around the veins, then it's lack of iron. But if the leaves are all yellow, then it's a watering issue (I've had both problems when I've grown them in the past!). I figured with the peat in the planting hole the soil would be OK on the acidity (at least temporarily...but if the soil is naturally rather alkaline you'll have to stay on top of that over time). Leaves turning yellow right away after planting strikes me more likely as a watering issue or transplant shock rather than iron deficiency. It's also not usually best to fertilize a plant right after transplanting so I'd hold off on the Ironite unless you're positive it's an iron issue and not a watering/transplanting issue.

Your probably right about the watering now that I think about it. Gardenias can be a pain if you don't have the right soil. My neighbor has huge gardenias and does nothing to them. Full sun, no watering, I doubt he does anything to them and they are huge. Others struggle with them. Let's see if I can find a picture of the neighbors august beauty.

Couldn't find it so here's a pic of mine.