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encourage leafy growth after bad late freeze ???

16 years ago

I still have some shrubs and trees that are barely leafing out after our late freeze several weeks ago. There are leaves just here and there on some things like my Shasta viburnums and I'm afraid the hot weather, which will be here very soon, will be hard on them.

Should I use a fertilizer to encourage more foliage? If so, what would be best to use? I have Osmocote Slow Release which is 19-6-12 and Peters Season Long which is 15-13-13 or I could go shopping for something else.

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Comments (4)

Embothrium
16 years ago
Fertilizing would help them recover - if they need it. You should really sample your soil and have it analyzed, otherwise you are just assuming a particular product is appropriate. Those ratios you listed all represent different amounts of primary nutrients, often a soil only needs to have one of these supplemented - let along a payload of multiple nutrients, a few or more in high amounts.

Soilless potting media are much more apt to become badly leached of multiple nutrients than an actual soil, thus 19-6-12 etc.
waplummer
16 years ago
Fertilizer is NOT the solution!
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debbiel
16 years ago
Christie, I am so glad you did this post. My shasta looks exactly like that....leaves here and there. I considered pruning but would not know where to start. I think I have decided to just let nature take it's course and hope for the best....I feel better knowing I am not alone. I hate to cut it down as it is a 8 foot shasta!
jcar
16 years ago
Be patient...my azaleas looked dead after our very late season freeze....They were brown,dried and looked burnt...I thought I had lost one of them, and half of the other one. I eventually got blooms on half of one plant....and now they both are both beginning to leaf out (all over). I didn't do anything special...just put the usual azalea food down that I always do... (I had put the food down before the late season freeze)....however I don't think that it was the food....just mother Nature righting herself.

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