A very sick Rhody??

Vicki, did you get anywhere with your rhody yet? I just found the thread and here are a couple more ideas. That soil looks like it has a high sand content, although it's hard to really tell from the photo. You do say it has less clay than other soil you have. I think the rhody looks like it either has nutrient deficiency or it has bugs such as mites. I really vote for the nutrient deficiency due to the color of the stems and leaves. You don't say whether you planted this rhody what the roots looked like when you planted. Were they particularly pot bound? If so, did you pull them apart so they could spread before putting it in the ground?

Since you have an azalea in the same spot and it's not doing well, either, I would go for the nutrient deficiency idea. I would dig up the plants, examine the roots and see if they look okay, like they are spreading out well. Then I would amend the soil heavily with compost before replanting. Dig lots of compost into the soil. You can't really overdo this part and the addition of organic matter will add nutrients to the soil and will also allow the plant to use those nutrients better. Then I would get a good rhody early spring fertilizer and give it a dose of that in May. When you replant, you might want to water it in with vitamin B1 water. You can get this in a liquid form, to be used in transplanting, or you can just crush up a tablet, the kind people take, and dissolve it in a gallon of water.

You could always do a soil test, but if there are no bugs (check the underside of the leaves for mites) this will probably help the plant. I don't see any sunburn on the leaves. They just look anemic to me.

I'm not a novice at living with and growing Rhodies, but I also have a 3-4 year old problem Rhodie that WAS a thriving happy plant. However... it turned banana YELLOW this winter. It's still alive, but it just turned bright yellow over a few winter months. I have started to supplement it with iron...and I sure hope it comes back. All my other Rhodies are fine. I do feed them a couple times during the summer and also hit them with a little bone meal. I am scratching my head on this one.

One of my most vigorous Rhodies was a sad hunk that broke off of a larger Rhodie we moved. I was just ill when 1/3 of it snapped off, but it had a small hunk of roots so I just tossed into a barrel half to "babysit it" It's just going gang busters...and now I'm sorry I stuffed it into a barrel half...lol I NEED to get it in the ground!

This message was edited Mar 22, 2009 7:46 AM

Hghmtn, is it possible that this rhody got too much exposure to drying winds during the cold part of the winter? It may have started on a downhill slide during that really long coldsnap we had, especially if the roots are not well mulched. Also, I wonder if you are feeding it too much. I think that if your soil is good, feeding once a year is sufficient. I don't feed mine but every couple of years. If you fertilize too much, you can get a build up of fertilizer salts in the soil, which is destructive to the plant. Also, since all the other rhodies are fine, I wonder if there is something getting at the roots of this one. Are they planted in the same area? If you could post a photo, people might have a few more ideas. I'd like to see what the new growth looks like.