Aslan...... The fact that you said..."there still MUST be plenty of moisture scares me" worries me..lol You can't take a chance with gardenia when it comes to moisture in your root zone, especially at a time like this. Do yourself and your tree a favor and get a wooden barbecue skewer or a wooden dowel and check for moisture in the root zone to make 'absolutely' certain there is until you get use to watering the mix. You can't afford to let the root zone go completely dry and you can't afford to over water either. You have to make sure that when you pull the stick out after checking the roots that it is not dry, nor still wet. With gardenia, you need to water before it gets completely dry, evenly moist they call it..Get it? :-) Newgen..How are you? The 5.1.1 mix is good for short term plantings and the gritty mix for long term plantings within the same pots for periods of time. Both are excellent though and it's up to you to choose onne that lasts longer than the other. Good luck:-)

roseyp8255, Everblooming (aka, Veitchii) is supposed to be a prolific bloomer and, as long as its needs are met in terms of climate, temp changes, humidity then it will be "Everblooming" and re-bloom its head off. Luckily, your state is one of those places where that is possible. August Beauty is another heavy bloomer for me but less so than Veitchii during the summer/fall time frame. Here in Texas, I get a limited-to-no bloom production in the summer/fall because the temps are in too high of a range and bud production requires certain ranges that we just cannot normally attain. But Everblooming has had "more" re-blooms than some of the other varieties that I have. Perhaps bud production is triggered at higher temps for Veitchii. By the way, good news from Texas! I added four more gardenias to my list of those that are coming back. Because the leaves are mostly coming out from the base of the plant, they all got a serious haircut (most are 3" high now). Obviously, I do not expect any flowers this year. If the plants can just use the time leafing out and working on their roots, that will be fine with me. You now... tt seems as if the talk that I had with them a week ago convinced them that it may be a good thing to finally leaf out. That is one reason why I always like to wait until mid-May before taking any drastic action. The hot season in Texas starts sometime in May so, if a plant does not at least leaf out by mid-month, it may have a hard time the rest of the summer. I did an unscientific study of last winter temps and determined that last winter was rather warm with hardly any freezing or sub-freezing temps at night. I theorize that the plants did not get hardened off / prepared for the sudden cold snowy day that we had in late December. And even though it was only one day of 30 degree temps & it snowed only 1/2 inch (the total for the whole winter), it just caught them quite unprepared.

Buyorsell888 - The gardenias are in fact in full sun in all the nurseries in my area. For reasons that continue to elude me. If I tried planting in full sun they would just die on me. Well one nursery does keep them under shade cloth. Miracle Gro soil isn't really used in my garden. And definitely not with my gardenias. Butterfly4u - I meant I watered the ones in the pots on the same schedule as my other potted gardenias. And my ones in the ground on the same schedule as the others in the ground. I have dozens of thriving gardenias around my yard. Both in pots and in the ground. Some are reaching the 15 year mark and a few others are on their second year. I'm a he. Lol... They are very hardy bushes so I'm really puzzled about the decline. The radicans is dead, I'm fairly certain the mystery of as well. The golden magic has green stems and that's about it. Hopefulauthor - They are in acid soil and fed acid fertiliser. I don't have any photos but I'll get some... not tomorrow as I'll be at seaworld. The day after. I have two more that are on the decline and would like to save them as well. It seems that none of my gardenias that I planted this year are surviving. Oh wait.... I planted another golden magic in my back planter and its doing just fine..

I HOPE that you don't have a plant virus. A few years ago, I had about 30 plants that I had grown from seed (got from the plant exchange here, actually). It was great, I had some papaya plants, a bunch of guavas, aloe, dragon fruit and even some tiny finger lime seedlings. Long story short, I went to a wedding shower, the party favors that were given were plants and I got a small coffee plant. I put it in the bathroom and months later noticed black spots on the leaves. I figured it was nothing. Months later I noticed similar spots on all my other plants. Then I had seedlings of artichokes that I noticed had them. I sent some of the artichoke seedlings with spots to the Agricultural extension in my state, they sent me a report saying it's some plant virus. Problem with that is, there is NO way to cure them! It was terrible, I had to throw out ALL my plants! I was so sad about that one. So, I don't buy plants from Lowes (which is where the coffee plant was from), or any other places that sell plants en masse. I just hope that you don't have a virus, but you can send a specimen to the ag extension. They don't charge, you just pay for postage. Good luck, hope it's something trivial.