Now? Not if you really want for them to live. Transplanting anything from one spot in the ground to another in the summer heat is very, very risky. I'd wait for cooler weather and transplant them then. Rhododendrums are not big fans of our summer heat anyhow, so they likely would respond very poorly to being transplanted in summer.

Congrats on the new house. I hope you have lots of room to grow all the plants you want.

Is this the Melissa I turned on to this forum? ;) Maybe, you need to fertilize a bit?

Moni

I know, I know Dawn....lol. I am just anxious to get this house landscaped the way I want it. The previous owners did the bare minimum if you could call it that. I really need a huge dose of patience. Moni, I think I will try fertilizer for the time being until I can transplant in the fall. Any suggestions? I've never had rhododendrons before. I'm excited to see them grow and thrive but the poor things just don't have the room where they are planted.

Moni, you asked if this is the Melissa you turned to the forum. I honestly have no idea, lol. I joined years ago and then got busy with work and homeschooling and then moving so I lost touch with the forum for a bit. But.......I am back with vengeance, lol.

Thanks again!! I love this forum so much and have missed it!!!! <3

Melissa

Are you the Melissa that once lived in Fairland?

That is me!! :)) Hi Carol!!!! How are you?! Hope you are doing well.

Welcome back! I think that if I had Rhodies I'd probably feed them an acidic fertilizer like Miracid or Espoma Holly-Tone. Rhododendrums need two things. Well, maybe three things. They need acidic soil ranging in pH from about 4.5 up to 6.0. They need well-drained soil. They need some protection from our worst summer heat. So, if your soil is acidic and if it drains well and if they have some shade from the worst heat of the day, I suspect you can keep them happy (even after you transplant them this fall or winter) and will love them. If you don't have acidic soil, well drained soil and something that can protect them from our worst summer heat, they may always struggle. Yellow leaves generally are a sign of stress. I don't know about you, but I find living in Oklahoma's heat stressful, and I suspect that all our plants feel the same way, so the yellow leaves might be their way of stomping their foot and pitching a temper tantrum just to let you know "it's too hot". As if you didn't know that without being told it by a plant. lol.

I think these (I shall call them girls, lol) are definitely throwing a temper tantrum and have been since before we moved here. Poor girls just needed someone to truly love them.

Well, I think first things first is that I need to test my soil. I know it's a clay-type soil (or at least i think so) but it seems to be rich in some areas. I am going to try one of the fertilizers you suggested for now till I can transplant. The area I want to transplant to is at the back of the yard and I'm pretty sure it drains well. Our property slopes towards the back. The spot gets sun but evening shade and is in a corner, so it would be blocked on 2 sides. Not that I want summer to hurry up and be over because I really do want to enjoy our new pool.....but...I REALLY want to move these rhododendrons so I can begin to enjoy them and watch them thrive. I'm glad I can come here where people understand how I can love gardening so much.

Here's a picture of one of the girls when we first moved here. There has been no new growth and no color change at all. :(

Guess you are a different Melissa. :). Does not matter, really. No idea about which fertilizer, just thought you may be able to give those rhoddis a boost for now.

Oh dear, that is a really bad location for them. Rhododendrons are just like azaleas in that they really need acidic, humusy, well-drained soil. The last thing they need is to be planted near a foundation or sidewalk (concrete is alkaline and would negatively inpact their soil, and brick is much the same), and the kind of mulch they need would be something like pine needles or bark mulch, not rocks. Unless soil is exceptionally well-drained, they're better off in a raised or mounded bed above grade level so that their roots never sit in very wet soil and rot.

Clay soil also would be really hard on them. Rhododendrons detest growing in any sort of slow-draining clay, and even well-amended clay may drain too slowly for them. I hope whoever planted them did the proper soil amendment that you'd also do for blueberry bushes or azaleas, which would involve adding a lot of peat moss and pine bark fines to bring down the soil pH and to ensure the soil drains excdeptionally well. When I grew azaleas in Texas, I grew them in a raised bed that was about 50% native black gumbo clay and 50% peat moss and pine bark fines. It was in morning sun and afternoon shade and I had to pay very close attention to their moisture needs in the summer. I think they still were in too much clay but I was a very young gardener then and didn't change it. The azaleas only lived about 3 years.

Also, you're sort of in the dark since you don't know the variety name, which also means you have no idea how large they might get. There are dwarf rhododendrons that only get a foot tall and there are standard rhododendrons that get 6-8 or even 10' tall. So, if the previous homeowner choose a very dwarf selection because they were going to be planted so close to the exterior wall of the house, your plants may not get much taller than they already are.

The yellowing of your leaves with slightly darker veins screams chlorosis, and this is not surprising because rhododendons are prone to it, especially in alkaline soil. This is because, if they are growing in alkaline soil, the high pH interferes in the plants' ability to take up iron. Adding both an acidifying fertilizer and some sort of iron like Ironite might help them, but it the soil pH is too high, the more beneficial kind of help will come from planting them into a more acidic soil when you transplant them. The yellowing also could mean that the rootball was planted too deeply. Because rhododendons have shallow root systems, the roots need to be planted very close to the surface of the soil. If they are planted too deeply in the soil, particularly in clay soil, they may struggle to survive. Normally, the thing to do would be to move them as quickly as possible to a better situation where you can ensure they are planted into properly prepared soil that drains exceptionally well and that is in the proper pH range. However, this is Oklahoma and our summer weather is notoriously hard on anything transplanted in the summer months, so that limits your ability to do very much to help them right now.

If you've ever grow acid-loving plants before, then you already know how important the soil pH is for them. I have strongly alkaline water (its pH tests at 8.2 or 8.3, very similar to our native soil's pH) so I don't even attempt to grow anything like azaleas or blueberries in the ground here because even if I did copious amounts of soil amending and built them their own raised bed filled with almost nothing but a blend of peat moss, sand and pink bark fines, they'd still have alkaline water watering them and the water would fight my attempt to keep them and their growing medium acidified unless I also treated the water to make it more acidic before I watered them. That's a lot more effort than I am going to go to in order to grow an acid-loving plant in alkaline soil and water, so I'm really hoping, hoping, hoping you have acidic soil to begin with, or you're going to face an uphill battle trying to keep those girls happy.

If I'm right, this might be your azalea. I bought one year before last because my grandpa in Ohio had a huge gorgeous specimen in his yard I knew I couldn't grow the one he grew, but the label claimed Boursault could be grown in our area under the right conditions. I tried to amend the area and it's actually under the southeast roofline extending about six feet from the house (small deck porch in the middle of house front.) I have not had much growth and had to treat for what I think was scale this spring, but I will happily try some more acidic fertilizer.

P.S. I didn't buy mine from the company in my link-picked mine up at a big box store.