Will a PineApple plant die after it fruits?
plant_junkie
14 years ago
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plant_junkie
14 years agoRelated Discussions
Newly planted fruit trees w/ signs of disease after only a week!
Comments (8)Dear Dr., I would suggest a strategy wait and see. How recent are the transplants into the ground? Is the soil amended with small wood chips/perlite to help with drainage? Are the plantings in a low area? Yellow leaves to me point to slowly draining soil or too much rain/watering. This past May I put a number of fruit trees in the ground, and had immediate concerns as well. I actually contacted my local county agricultural extension (usually connected to a university with a agricultural based program). In my state its Penn State. I would just google your county name and "agricultural extension". They have the info and wherewithal to diagnose your disease. They can even have a sample tested if need be. Usually, when I call, since I am not a commercial gardener, I speak to a master gardener. I have found them to be very helpful. To fill you in with what happened. I thought I had a fuji apple and 2 pears with fire blight. I emailed pictures to the master gardener and asked. He immediately replied and said that it did not look like fire blight. He also informed me that most trees go through an adjustment phase where the newly transplanted roots cannot keep up with the demands of the quickly growing tree. Consequently, there is leaf loss and the tree is more susceptible to disease. I'm telling you I kept my receipts close, because I really thought this tree was going to die. 100% of the leaves were affected. I was thinking to myself, how is this tree going to photosynthesize with no leaves? My only solace was that the tree trunk was a nice green color (like the variety standard) I waited a month or so, and since the damage to my leaves did not look insect related, I sprayed with Serenade, an organic multi purpose fungicide (from Fedco organic mail order). Now since it has been quite rainy and damp in PA this year, it seems to wash off in the rain soon after I apply it. However, whether it has been me suppressing the infection with Serenade, or the trees have overcome the transplant shock, the leaf tips on the branches are budding out again with good, healthy leaves. I believe all of the original leaves are going to die, but not before bring replaced with new ones. My suggestion: take some pics and call the master gardener. They have seen most diseases and can step you through a treatment. Read up on the various diseases of your trees during the winter and order products mail order (since some of the products will not be available locally-I have gotten many an odd looking for organic products at the local Lowes). If you are going fungicidal route, I think most are broad spectrum- suppress or kill a variety of types. I really like Fedco to order supplies from, they are organic (for me a plus), they are an honest company, they ship quick. They also carry broad spectrum products Spinosad/ Monterey Garden spray for insects and Serenade, fungal supressant/fungicide Read up: I know fire blight is the kiss of death in Pennsylvania for apple and pear right when the first buds emerge in spring- transmitted by pollinators, so I am trying to devise a plan to cover them (?) in the spring. Not 100% sure of what to do, but thinking about it now so I won't be caught by surprise in the spring. I see you have a honeycrisp, you may be facing the same issue. Here is a link that might be useful: VA agricultural extension links on the right...See MoreProblems with my Citrus Plants, Scale, Crinkly Leaves and Die Off
Comments (18)Hey Toni, thanks for your complements on my plants. Beleive it or not, all of my plants with the exception of the Aussie FIngerlime have been grown from seed. As a matter of fact, the Grapefruits were personally selected and liberated by me :) . I was out in AZ at the end of 2001, I was out for a evening drive with my wife and sister in law, we went to the highest point in Phoenix, then on the way back I passed a former manson with a radio station billboard on it with some sort of event going on at the grounds. It had a semi circular driveway and the entire very large front lawn was fileld with quite old Grapefruit trees, all seemingly the same type. When I went 3/4 of the way around I stoped said what the hell, jumped out looked at a nice looking tree and picked 2 grapefruits off the tree, the biggest and best ones I could find, and tossed them into the car. I had to wait 1.5 months for the box for some reason to come back to NY that I shipped em in but they were intact and whole. I had the seeds of one of the grapefruits planted for me by a friend and co-worker, since he had better facilities and room for that. Once they gre we split up the bunch. I kept 3 seedling and the other 2 went with him. I think he has one tree left. The other 3 have been growing with me ever since. Grapefruits #1 & 2 were so close together that I decided no to seperate them, they seem sto be doing great otherwise so it has never been a worry. The Key Limes were a bit simpler. Basically I bought a bag of "Susie" Key Limes in 2004, made a key Lime pie, saved the seeds, 15 seedlings grew. I lost 10 of them when I went away for 5 days and the pot they were in was not watered while I was gone. I planted the remainnig 5. One died in a month, another died suddenly of mysterious leaf loss the next year. Now of course I had a Key Lime almost die of the same mystery. The Lemon was planted September of 2005. I palnted 6 seeds,only 1 came up. I thought I had a second plant but it turned out initally to look like a weed. I figured I would let the weed keep the lemon company for a while. I was almost ready to pull the weed and then it flowered, then about a month later I found a whole bunch of small thai peppers growing on it...lol. It was a seedling for when I planted some in the same pot 2 years previous. As you can tell I just stuck the seed in existing dirt. The Kumquat I bought at the local Stop and Shop in December of 2005 and got 2 seedlings from that. I will be transplanting them soon. The Aussie FIngerlime I bought from a place in South Carolina. I will be looking up the name of the place when I get to work tomorrow. Anyway that is my story, so no grafts except on the Aussie, all is from seed. VTY -Mark...See MoreAfter Transplant, Loss of Fruit and Yellow Leaves of Meyer Lemon
Comments (9)Hi Christy, Yes, that MG citrus soil is toxic!! I have no idea why they sell that soil as citurs soil when it is so far from being citrus soil. Here is my experience with MG citrus soil. I used it last spring when I bought my dwarf keylime and my dwarf moro blood orange. A year later, and the dwarf moro blood orange is no more, and lucky for me dwarf key lime has thrived. I would urge you to repot the Meyer lemon ASAP. If the Meyer's roots stay moist for more than 2 days, you run the risk of having root rot and a whole slew of problems. I was turned on to Al's gritty mix. You might be able to make a version of the gritty mix but PLEASE don't use the vermiculite! That is also moisture renentive and therefore will keep your mix moist. From what I have learned from Mike, the point of the gritty mix is to have a mix that drains frelly and dries out completely in 1-2 days. I had a hard time deciding on using this or not. I was concerned about how well my citrus trees would do when I go on vacation since I really don't have anyone to water for me. However, I have seen a rapid big change in the 3 trees that I have this mix in. We should get together and write a complaint to Miracle Grow. They really need to change the name of the mix to just cactus soil!! Good luck with your tree. Once you change the soil to Al's gritty mix, your tree should improve greatly and yes it is extemely important that you remove every last bit of the soil mix before you repot it into the gritty mix. I would take the tree to the sink after you remove the majority of the crappy MG citrus soil. I would have the water at luke warm and rinse all the soil off those roots. I would not wait another minute to repot this tree. I don't remember who said it here, but someone had said that the average life expectancy of a potted citrus is two years because they normally die from root rot. The thing that is really bad is that us newbies don't think that we are doing anything wrong in using the MG soil since it is MG. I have been growing tropicals and other plants since for quite a while now and the biggest lesson that I have learned is that a prepackaged soil is not necessarily a good soil to use. For the past 4 years or so, I have been mixing up diffrent soils based on the needs of the plant. Citrus and mango were the last two fruit trees that I had problems with making a mix for. Andrew...See MoreCovered Up Tender Plants Or Gonna Let Them Die?
Comments (24)Dorothy, That's one reason I don't try really hard with off-season container tomatoes or with tomatoes grown indoors--the decline in the flavor is awful, and after October has ended, they grow and ripen at a snail's pace. Some years I've kept them alive by dragging them into the garage on cold nights, and leaving them in there on cold days. They do flower and set fruit, but the tomatoes that set in November-January took twice as long as usual to ripen and their flavor still was lacking and their size was as much as 1/4 the usual size. I think that if I used a heater to keep the greenhouse at daytime and nighttime temperatures like we typically have in May or early June, the winter tomatoes would taste better and maybe grow faster and size up better, but it isn't worth what it would cost to keep the greenhouse that warm. When I was removing row covers this morning, I noticed that some of the row covers a very thick and heavy layer of frost on them and others had a lighter patchier frost. Regardless, everything that was covered survived unscathed, except for three leaves on the Seminole squash. They were blackened and withered. They had been covered, but I suspect there was a rip in the row cover over them and the frost came in through that tear in the cover. As for the plants I left uncovered, most of them were fine overall but the upper foliage was damaged while the lower foliage and, in the case of the peppers, the fruit beneath the upper foliage, were not damaged. The plant that looks the worst? The big pecan tree. Its upper foliage is definitely frost-bitten or frozen. Everything underneath the upper foliage is fine. The four o'clocks were fine, but most of them get some protection from surrounding trees. All the container plants that we dragged into the garage on Friday are fine, and definitely were happy to be back outside in natural light this morning instead of indoors under fluorescent lighting. The last time I looked, they had raised our forecast low for tonight to 50 so I feel a little bit better about that than the 46 degrees forecast earlier. However, for those of you who are new to the forum and haven't heard me say this 500 times in the last 5 years, in one spring we had a forecast high of 50 and I didn't cover up my plants (it was early May) and the temperature dropped to 32 and almost everything froze back to the ground. So, even at 50 I feel a little nervous about the temperatures, and likely always will, but not nervous enough that I'll cover up everything again tonight. It is sunny, clear and perfectly gorgeous outside right now with a current temperature of 62 degrees. I hope the rest of this month is like today, but not like last night. Larry, I only found lady bugs and green lacewings on the plants underneath the floating row covers as I uncovered them this morning, but I had grasshoppers sitting on top of the row covers. I assume they were trying to find a way to get to the plants or they were just sunning themselves and waiting for me to uncover the plants. I went to the garden shed and got my spray bottle of Take-Down spray and hit each grasshopper with several squirts from that bottle. I doubt those hoppers are still alive or will give me any more trouble. Dawn...See Moremr_subjunctive
14 years agorhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
14 years agoplant_junkie
14 years agoamccour
14 years agoplant_junkie
14 years agoamccour
14 years agoMargaret Towers
7 years agoMargaret Towers
7 years agobmelz
7 years ago
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rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7