Pyracantha poor vigour
pablohoney1981
Posts: 2
Hi, newbie here. I have a problem with my pyracantha which has me baffled. I have a 2ft stone wall with a trellis fence above it extending it to 6ft off my brick paved drive. When we moved in about 18 months ago I thought this could be a wonderful pyracantha hedge, so I removed some of the bricks and planted 8 pyracantha plants up against it. I followed all the guides so I did it correctly. I spaced them out properly and used root-grow. Iv been keenly observing them ever since.
The problem is that 7 of them are showing poor vigour. The leaves have become a pale green and there is poor growth. Despite this, iv had two fabulous crops of berries. Most of the probs iv read about affect flowers and berries, whereas they are fine.
I might have attributed it to poor soil, poor aspect, drying out etc, but what has me baffled is that the end plant is thriving. Lovely dark glossy leaves, tonnes of new growth and today if been out and looked at it and its started to produce flowers. It was the smallest plant I had, but has overtaken all the others.
This leads me to conclude it can't be growing conditions and must be disease, but it doesn't resemble any of the problems if read about - its not (typical at least) blight, scab or fusarium wilt, and why are the berries unaffected? It has me baffled.
I wonder if I've somehow caused this as I use worm leachate from my wormery (I now know this is not true worm tea as its not oxidised and smells anaerobic) on them as a fertiliser, but not that often and I use it on the thriving plant as well.
Anyone got any ideas? Thanks
Posts
How close to the wall did you plant them and is the last one getting all the sun or rain, or just shy of the rain shadow created by the wall?
Just an idea
Pretty close to the wall, I know that's a bit of a no-no, but logically surely that would also affect the end one too. I don't think its getting any more sun or rain than the others to account for this. Only difference perhaps is that there is a gradient to the ground so the end plant is closer to the top of the wall. But its gradual, can't fathom how that could make a difference to just the one plant.
The closest thing I can see the problem resembles is nitrogen deficiency. Though worm leachate is supposed to be nitrogen rich
I'd just sprinkle some growmore around each plant and see how they do. If that doesn't solve it add some well rotted manure or compost around the base of each plant. Pyracantha is pretty tough but a little tlc may help.