It is only happening on new leaves. Young leaves rolled and distorted could be either chemical damage or Rhododendron Gall Midge, Clinodiplosis rhododendri. Chemical damage should be associated with a chemical application (fertilizer, herbicide, deicing salt, etc.) and should affect more than one plant. The Rhododendron Gall Midge is a native pest of Rhododendron catawbiense, R. maximum and their many hybrids during the May to October growing season. The larval feeding damage from this fly can cause discoloration and distorted foliage. This damage can appear as in-rolled, twisted leaves that have turned a yellow color. This can be seen on young leaves that have separated from the bud scale. Leaves attacked in the bud stage may die if the injury is severe. Care must be taken to distinguish this pest damage from similarly manifested damage caused by leafhopper injury, chemical injury, leaf-roller activity and aphid feeding. There is no way to undo the damage once it has occurred. Control is effected by applications of insecticides with the bud break stage of rhododendron development. An alternative would be to maintain healthy plants so that they could survive any damage caused by an infestation or to prune newly-infested foliage that contain larvae. To keep them healthy, the most important thing is good drainage. The pots must have good drainage. Second, don't over-water. It is much better for them to wilt a little in the heat of the day than to be over-watered. Watering every day or two may be too often. I would cut back until you see a little wilting on new leaves in the heat of the day. Here is a link that might be useful: How to care for rhododendrons

Hi all, first time posting on the daylily forum. I found this thread when looking for info on specific cultivars I'm considering ordering. I'm located about 45 minutes south of Georgian Bay in Midwestern Ont., so by your standards, I'm northern. My new acquisitions get watered for the first couple of weeks after planting, other than that, they're pretty much on their own, unless it is severely dry. I generally do not fertilize. New beds are amended with composted manure from our pile which our stock consistently adds to (funny how that works, isn't it) and wood shavings. In some areas of our yard, the topsoil is only 2-3 inches thick, and then it's like digging in the driveway! Elegant Candy gave an impressive performance here, it's second year. I think it had about a dozen scapes (didn't actually count the scapes, so going from memory on this count) but the scapes averaged over 30 buds per scape. This was counting all buds on all scapes, both first and rebloom. Precious D'Oro (don't think this one is registered) is a bud builder, with blooms measuring about 3" or so, polychromed. I marked it this year as having an average of 37 buds, with 4 way branching. I know last year (in our drought), it had many scapes at 50 or better. Come Out and Play (a Polston intro from '06) has scapes like tree trunks. It starts blooming around the first of August, with instant rebloom, so blooms well into September for me. First bloom scapes average 30-35 buds, with rebloom lower. Branching is 5 and 6 way for me. I don't use photobucket or such, and not sure how to upload photos, but so far, these have been the best. This is the year that I consistently started paying better attention to bud counts, and have many new additions that will take next summer or the following to really hit their stride.

Suzie, You're welcome. My garden is roughly 10,000 square feet but its size is hard to figure because it isn't a square or rectangular box. It is actually several separate plots of land, and the biggest portion of it is bordered by the woods on the north side, a grove of trees on the west side, and the driveway on the south side. It curves to go around trees, and a big mound of clay that is worthless and which I'd love to have removed, and a little pond for the wildlife. When we fenced it, it took 400' linear feet of fencing, but because it isn't a nice square garden, it really isn't 100' by 100'. It looks like a garden designed by a person who'd been drinking. I should have just hired a guy with a bulldozer to flatten everything to the ground, but I wanted to preserve mature trees and shrubs for the wildlife....so what we have is a crazy garden tucked into a clearing in the woods with fencelines that meander around trees, shrubs, cacti (even they shriveled up and were really dessicated last year), a berm and a pond. I have several smaller garden plots that are more squared off and normal looking, and I grow lots in containers...I have 60 tomato plants in containers, though I am tired of watering them and about to let them go. They're really struggling in all these 100-degree-plus days. I grow so much because I use wide rows 4' to 5' wide with 12-18" pathways, although I confess that the plants spill over into the pathways. I also grow vertically on every bit of the garden fence I possibly can, which explains why I have cantaloupes hanging up there 8' above the ground at the top of the fence. Tomorrow I am going to climb a ladder to harvest the beans growing next to them, and while I am up there I am going to put slings up to support the cantaloupes. Today (and I am laughing at myself here) I found a Moon and Stars watermelon growing on a fence about 4' above the ground. The issue with that is that Moon and Stars is a huge melon. Usually I just plant the little mini-watermelons by the fence and they do just fine when grown vertically. I'm going to have to figure out how to support the Moon and Stars melon as it enlarges. I didn't think I had any Moon and Stars melons in that specific garden plot. It is the Three Sisters Garden with 'Texas Honey June Corn', 'Seminole ' and 'Old Timey Corn Field' pumpkins, 'Worchester Indian Red' Lima Bean, and Red Ripper southern peas. I'm not sure if I planted a watermelon plant there or if it is a volunteer from compost. When I saw the plant climbing the fence a couple of weeks ago, I shrugged and wondered if it was going to be 'Black Tail Mountain' or 'Yellow Baby'. Well it is neither. It has the moons and stars of 'Moon and Stars' so I am sure that's what it is. I do remember squeezing in some birdhouse gourds on the other fence, and a few leftover gourd plants and okra plants at the east end. In the spot where the watermelon is growing? Well, I have Kebarika bush beans there. So, apparently there's a melon there. All of the above explains how I don't plant rows so much as I plant groupings that fill up the space both vertically and horizontally. Even when it is unplanned, it happens. In the big garden my Seminole Pumpkins have escaped from their bed and run 20' eastward, but they aren't growing on the ground. No, that would be too simple. They are running across the tops of the tomato cages of the 'Indigo Rose' tomatoes. Apparently while I was busy canning during the whole month of June, plants began running amok in the garden. Tim can't even see me when I'm in the garden, so he stands at the gate and hollers my name. My cats sometimes hunt me down but often they just walk up and down the adjacent driveway meowing. I tried Square Foot Garden and it was only okay for me. I just am not that structured and regimented in the way I do things, and I felt some of the plant spacing didn't work well in our hot climate, especially with big monster tomato plants. So, after reading John Jeavons book (linked below) I began planting and interplanting using his spacing and find I can get about 4 times the yield I got from traditional row spacing years and years ago. Here's a quick example of how you can get more from your garden. I planted three rows of tomato plants, with each row being about 18' long and with 4' in between the rows. In the middle of that 4', I planted rows of bush beans. The bush beans had matured and had been harvested before the tomato plants were 4' tall, and after that, I yanked out the bean plants and the tomatoes filled in all that space. I often do the same things with carrots, lettuce and radishes underneath tomato plants like a ground cover. It is a way to get multiple crops from one space. I grow all my melons under okra plants. I grow most all my vining crops on trellises and fences. Often the pole beans will climb not only the fences, but any tomato cages or okra or corn plants within reach. I work really hard to get the most from every square inch of space. I always think the garden looks great in May because it is green, lush and yet still soemwhat orderly. Then June arrives and the heat brings explosive growth (as long as there is moisture) and it gets rowdy, wild and out-of-control and becomes a jungle. I continue working night and day to manage the harvest, and likely will make the last salsa tomorrow. I've been running the dehydrator almost 24/7 and may finish drying the Principe Borghese tomatoes this week. After that, there likely won't be that many more tomatoes to harvest and dry at once, although every now and then I get a bunch of SunGolds at one time. I'm sort of moving on now, beyond tomatoes to peppers, trading in salsa-making and other fabulous tomato products for candied jalapenos peppers, jalapenos rings, Habanero Gold jelly and jalapeno jelly. I've also been busy making pickles. Today I made Spicy Pickles using a Mrs. Wage's spice mix that includes jalapenos. I think Tim is going to love these hot, spicy pickles, but they may be too hot for me. Tim looked at the counter a few days ago, with rows of tomato products (Pasta Sauce, Chili Base and Pizza Sauce) lined up neatly in their pint jars while I was trying to figure out where to put them and said "it's starting to look like you're a Doomsday Prepper". I told him no, that I was just a gardener who didn't want to waste a bit of the harvest. Doomsday Prepper indeed! (I do enjoy watching the show, but I am not one of those folks.) My Roma/Villawear tomato press/strainer is one reason I can so much stuff. Without it, the whole process is too time-consuming. With it, I can whip out batch after batch of stuff in the blink of an eye. I never would can this much if I had to peel tomatoes. If I never, ever again have to drop tomatoes into boiling water to begin the tomato-peeling process, I'll be a happy camper. Insanity reigns at our house this year--both in the garden and in the kitchen, but I am having a lot of fun (tiring fun) and getting oodles of food put up. The deep freeze is about 2/3s full, and I will finish filling it up (hopefully!) with okra, frozen peppers and mid- and late-season corn. My big worry has been that fires would start up and would take me away from the kitchen. Now that the tomato preservation is about done, I can relax and not worry much about that. We have had fires, but just not big, out-of-control ones like we had last year, and I've only had to leave in the middle of canning one time, and it wasn't at a critical time when I shouldn't leave. I have my eye on a place behind the garage where I want to be able to plant corn and pumpkins, but the soil needs massive work. I scatter sowed (with no tilling) a deer/wildlife plot mixture there last fall and it all seemed to grow well. This spring when Tim cut it, he came in and told me the turnips had grown entirely above ground. I told him that turnips will pop up like that, similar to onions sometimes (at least in our clay they do) and he told me they'd never been in the ground. I didn't believe him and went out to see...and there they were lying sideways on top of the hard clay soil. I cannot even imagine how much work we'd have to do to make that soil suitable for growing anything, but if we managed to do it, that would give me 1800 more square feet to play with. Dawn

I think you and PW may be measuring bloom reliability differently. These rebloomer shrubs produce two flushes of blooms and are newly developed so those are some of the reasons why the varieties are rated by PW as bring more reliable. They are not trying to imply that you will get spring blooms always or that their old wood will not get killed in some winters, though. The first spring 2023 flush requires that the dormant flower buds from last July-August 2022 bloom in spring 2023; it sounds like only a handful of stems survived and are now blooming for you. But ensure you do not prune leafless stems too early: perhaps prune by the end of May in the south; by the end of June or thereabouts further north (it varies by geog location). The December 22nd arctic blast may have killed buds or stems if it affected you like it did here in the south this season. The second flush in late summer/fall 2023 requires that the new, spring 2023 stems get tall enough to quickly develop flower buds and open them immediately by late summer/fall 2023 or before. It may be too early to see if those will fail to bloom.