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Daphne issues
Flo1
Posts: 14
Right, so my daphne has decided to throw most of its leaves off, all of them look like on picture one. There is regrowth from buds, but they are brown and drop off when being touched. Apart from fresh growth at the top, the shrub is completely bare.
Daphne virus? Vine Weevil?
If there is hope it might recover, I'm happy to wait, as I love this shrub, but if it's going to die, anyway, I'd rather get rid of it now, and prevent any disease from spreading.
Many thanks!
0
Posts
Those are old leaves that are yellowing, so let them fall. What's important is the new growth emerging. Important, too, is to avoid root disturbance - daphnes HATE it! Careful when you cultivate round it. I always weed by hand when getting close. Any flower buds that are still there are late anyway and this warm spell will hurry them on, or they'll drop. Give it a light feed, a little WELL composted garden compost spread round it. They will not tolerate a waterlogged soil, they don't require heavy feeding and are best left alone to do their own thing in their own time.
H-C
Thank you for the reply!
I thought it might be its new coat of leaves, so to say, but the brown buds that fall off worry me. It is in a less than ideal position, very heavy clay and waterlogged much of the winter. I have since realised that this was a mistake (I was a complete newbie to gardening then), but I know about the aversion to root disturbance and have therefore resisted moving it - and prayed it will somehow survive...
for info, I moved my daphne at the end of the first year, it definitely didn't like its first home and was dying. It hasn't grown much the last few years in its new home, but it did flower for the first time this year and it very happy there now, so I'm glad I moved it, as it would have been dead otherwise.
Sometimes you have to just wing it and see, but as I say it would have been dead by now if I hadn't moved it, so had nothing to lose. Love it where it is now.
I had a friend moving from a rented house and the landlord told her she could take what she planted, including a daphne odora marginata. She said she didn't have room for it so I took it. Nice sized root ball and it's fine.
Maybe I'll take a photo tomorrow to show the fasciation and flowers.
It certainly can be done, but I always advise caution. BIG rootball and go for it. Plenty of well composted organic matter mixed in. Just re-doing an old sink with four different miniature daphne cultivars. My little playtime tomorrow before work!
H-C
I figured I had nothing to lose. If I left it behind, I'd not have it. If it moved and it died, I'd not have it, but there was the chance it'd live , and it has.
I'd not recommend it as a routine procedure but I always think .. " plants don't read the rule books"
No,they don't! Cistus straggly, flowering at the ends of stems, happily, just not neat and tidy as we like them, hebes similarly unkempt, hellebores germinating everywhere except in the seed trays, willow seedlings assuming you want them in groups in the pots of OTHER plants, acers growing luxuriantly in exposed positions on shallow chalk soils and sun-loving pittosporums thriving in the shade of a huge ash tree in a garden I've recently finished. Perverse, frustrating but never dull
H-C
I work on the principle that living things. ALL living things , want to carry on living and will do their best to do so.