Perhaps I can help, although I see that this is a VERY old posting. I can't help with the brownleaf issue, but I have experienced this growth probblem before. 2 years ago I bought (3) 3-ft oldhamii plants. I planted two at the edge of my St. Aug. lawn, and the third went in a very "dead" area (limestone landscaping gravel on a weed-control mat). I didn't dig the hole as big as it needed to be (due to tree roots). 6 months later, as the other 2 were shooting up nicely, the third did put out some new culms, but not any bigger. At 18 months, when the other two had gotten to be heavy-culmed and 8ft tall, the third looked just like yours did in the picture, but maybe a little taller. After so much care and feeding, I decided that the location was the problem. So I uprooted the straggler plant and put it 8 feet away, at the edge of a flowerbed. That was about 2 months ago, and the new culms popping up are twice as heavy and standing straight up. So perhaps your roots are just cramped up. my 2 cents. -james k

More on soil & plant growth... "Minerals from the soil make up about 5 percent of the solid material in plant roots, stems and leaves. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen from the air and water make up most of the other 95 percent. The leaves take in carbon dioxide from the air through tiny pores. Using solar energy, the leaves re-combine the carbon with oxygen and hydrogen to make sugars and starches. The sugars then combine with minerals from soil to make fibers, proteins, plant oils, and fats. The plant uses these sugars, starches, proteins, oils and fats to grow and reproduce." Interesting stuff, aye? :) Here is a link that might be useful: USDA Grazing Factsheet

Mosquitoes are a problem sporadically for us, but since we tend not to have the heavier rainfall many of you have been having, they're not much of a problem right now. We do have a huge platoon of dragonflies and damselflies who look for food relentlessly all day long and they love mosquitoes, and we have lots of birds (including Purple Martins) and bats that eat them too. I also put Bt 'israelensis' granules or dunks in all our standing bodies of water...like the rain barrels, the ponds, etc. Suzie, It can be very hard to identify caterpillars since there are over 300,000 species of Lepidoptera worldwide but Susan might be able to tell you what it is since she is into butterfly gardening. On the website linked below, there are additional links that identify known butterflies and moths of Oklahoma. If the damage to your shrubs rises to the level that you feel like you need to treat the caterpillar infestation, you can spray your shrubs with Bt 'Kurstaki' which is a toxin manufactured from a bacteria that specifically targets caterpillars. It is organic and won't harm anything other than the butterfly/moth larvae. It is easily found in stores and the products that have it as their active ingredient include Thuricide, Dipel and Safer Caterpiller Killer. In the veggie garden, I generally just handpick cats off plants because I have so many flowers there that attract butterflies and moths, and even desirable caterpillars like those of the Black Swallowtail, so I don't like to use Bt there. In an ornamental shrub bed, though, I wouldn't hesitate to spray with Bt if the shrubs had considerable damage. Anna, I'm in Love County and have not seen any decrease in fire ants this year (I wish I had), so I don't think the winter affected ours even though our low temps this winter went down into the single digits a few times. We had them all over the place beginning about late March and running through mid-May. Since the rain stopped in our county and the heat cranked up into the mid- to upper-90s, they've gone underground the last 2 or 3 weeks and I'm not seeing them as much, but I bet if it rained they'd pop up out of the ground overnight. I still find them in raised beds in the veggie garden when I'm digging or when I'm pulling weeds, and I still run over an occasional mound when mowing. I only treat mounds in the veggie garden and in my container-grown vegetables, the dog's fenced play yard, and the backyard where our granddaughter plays and I only use organic fire ant killers. We have almost 15 acres, so there's no way we could afford to treat all of it. In the past I have used some non-organic fire ant killers, but because we have a lot of edible crops in the form not only of vegetables but also fruit trees and berry crops, I've stopped using all nonorganic fire ant killers. We have oodles of native ants of all kinds, but the evil fire ants dominate the ant world at our place. We also have red harvester ants in and around the veggie garden, but I leave them alone because they are a food source for the horned toads and because they clean up the carcasses of dead insects. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Butterflies and Moths of Oklahoma

I am thinking that water your collect from your roof is on the acid side - too many cars, too much exhaust... we are not in a pristine world anymore... and the smoke from Chinese still mills is reaching Pacific coast of North America 24/7. My understanding is that AVs prefer the pH of 6.4-6.8, otherwise they do not absorb nutrients well enough. The second issue with rainwater - it doesn't have calcium and magnesium micronutrients that are always dissolved in a tap water. So oops. In some areas water is not good for tender plants - high Ph, high solids - usually it the water that comes from artesian wells. If the plant collection is large and watering it with a store bought Spring Water is too much, some people buy a RO filter that produces almost distilled water. For RO water Michigan State University developed a fertilizer that compensates for the missing micronutrients so you can get it. For now - repot your plants in a food fresh soil and try a bottled water for a while. Normally the tap water is OK, exceptions are dissolved solids over 200ppm, preferably around 150 ppm, normal tap Ph is around 8-8.5 - they add buffer - something Ca ang Ma salts to prevent sedimentation in the pipes. Usually it is compensated by the peat in your soil that produces humic acid if kept warm and humid... like in our houses. The last exception is if your water treatment plant uses chloramine instead of chlorine. Chlorine in water evaporates if you keep the water in the open for 24 hours. chloramine not so. You can neutralize it with chemical from an aquarium supply store. All this info you can get in your water treatment facility. They should send you a yearly report anyway.