Leafless azaleas

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• D0rdogne_Damsel Posts: 4,184

  April 2021

  I have a couple looking as sad as that too, I am hoping someone will offer some advice I can follow too.

  • “Coffee. Garden. Coffee. Does a good morning need anything else?” —Betsy Cañas Garmon

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• luis_pr Posts: 123

  April 2021 edited April 2021

  Late frosts can zap the blooms, foliage and even cause severe damage in the form of bark split if the sap is flowing & weather turns cold enough while the plant breaks dormancy early, is actively flowering or has developed the flower buds in preparation for blooming. Foliage may delay showing signs of damage sometimes as late as in the summer. When late frosts are forecasted, you can evaluate how the plant is doing and do nothing if it appears to be dormant and the temperature dip is small or take action if it appears to be breaking dormancy. You can water deeply the night before, maintain mulch around the plant and use some form of frost cloth or blankets to protect a plant in "grow mode", being careful that the weight of any protection does not break branches. Try not to fertilize until chances of frost in your area have passed and, this time only, until you see signs of new growth from the base or you see leaf out. Going forward, wait for the plant to develop new foliage in a few weeks (or not), maintain 5-10 cm of organic mulch and maintain the soil as evenly moist as you can (water if the soil at a depth of 5-10 cm feels dry or almost dry). New growth from the base can take a long time, maybe a month or more sometimes. Maintaining the soil moist after the frost is important as some of the damage after a frost is due to dehydration. The state of this year's flower buds is another story: if they brown out, they are history. If this cultivar produces blooms several times throughout the year, future blooms on still green branches will not be affected. If the plant had any bark split, it is hard to predict what will happen then. The branches above the injury may dry out. You can also close the injury and see what happens but wait until summer is over to decide that it helped or not. Other times, you get new branches, new foliage or new growth from the plant originating from the base. Right now, I have all of the above things going on after a bad time in February, when we dropped to -19C just as the plants were blooming or increasing the size of their unopened flower buds.    When this happens, I can use the scratch method to check if thick branches are still alive (very carefully scratch the bark to see if you notice "green") but most times, I give them up to 2 months to recover. Then I prune in small chunks from the edges inwards until I see "green". You can remove the browned out leaves, flower and flower buds by hand at any time.
  

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• D0rdogne_Damsel Posts: 4,184

  April 2021

  Thank you @luis_pr, Very informative and helpful. 

  • “Coffee. Garden. Coffee. Does a good morning need anything else?” —Betsy Cañas Garmon

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• Nanny Beach Posts: 8,719

  April 2021

  Normally in the UK we can have frost till the end of May,I have a lot of azaleas and rhododendron some in pots,my downfall is not watering enough the previous year.I have never protected them against frost,sun and wind yes, because they are Japanese woodland plants

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• james.kavanagh Posts: 3

  April 2021

  Thanks for all the comments guys, indeed I think it’s the watering, lesson learned hopefully it bounces back. Many thanks for the comments

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