HI All,
Need some help. Last week we picked up 35 English box shrubs (i think that's what they are). They were free from a wholesale nursery (on the side of the road with a big free sign.. probably 500 odd shrubs there)
This is what they look like:
I have watered them every second day and they started looking good (like what they do in the photos). On Sunday I went to Bunnings and bought Seasol. I mixed 70ml to 9litres of water and watered them at their base. I had some mix left which I topped out with water and then used the shower head on the watering can and watered all their leaves.
Now it looks like a couple of the shrubs are dying. The leaves have all gone yellow. Is this due to the seasol hitting the leaves and then we had a fairly warm day on Sunday as well?
Should I prune all the red foilage back? What else should I do to help them grow?
Free. Thats always nice!
These box are certainly stressed. I would suggest pruning them back hard, to reduce the energy demands that the foliage are putting on the roots. Even cutting them back by half would be ok. They are also thin and spindly, so pruning would help to thicken them up. They are also probably a bit big for their current pots. I would plant them in the ground, or repot them. Seasol is fine, but use it below recommend strength to avoid stressing these plants further.
English box do tend to get a bit yellowish when the weather cools, however these plants look too yellow for that to be the only factor.
Good luck.
There is absolutely nothing in Seasol that can stress or harm any plant. Years ago they didn't even have dilution ratios on the bottles. Why? Because it really doesn't matter. At worst, you over use it. No harm to any plant. People just were not sure how to use it so they came up with some dilution ratios to help buyers get the best mileage and results from seasol to keep their customers satisfied.
All seasol does is thicken the cell walls, increase the root mass and the other attributes tend to follow off those two main product features.
Keep using the seasol every two weeks with a cap full into a watering can. I would also suggest getting some "powerfeed" into the watering can too. This will provide them with some desperately needed nutrients. Some slow release fert may go some way in the top of the pots too as an alternative.
They would not have been getting hand watered prior to you buying them and the roots would be chockas in the pots. Nutrients are heavily leached from pots when handwatering is used to water. Also water consumption can be as high as 300% more when handwatering from my trials and these findings are also similar in a Nursery and Garden Industry Association (NGIA) trial done earlier this year in SEQ on handwatering.
Once you started caring for them what was in the pot made a difference. Then you leached the nutrients out of the pots with the handwatering and that would be amplified if the roots are very full in there. It would be coincidence that they took a turn after the seasol.
I would suggest planting them and rough up the roots before they go in or rough up or trim the roots and bung them into bigger pots. A light trim won't go astray either.
What a good score
They could possibly be root bound sitting in water repellent potting mix. When you water, make sure the water is penetrating and not just running down the sides. Sitting them in saucers of water for a few hours should do the trick if this is the case. If you are keeping them in the pots for now, I would place them in a part shade position.
See this link for what happens to a dry pot as Donna is describing
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=13938&p=167010&hilit=mates+nursery#p167010
Thanks for all the useful info. Due to the past couple of warmish days in melb again, I have been watering the shrubs every second evening. Now its pouring rain which should help them alot.
Will see if I can move them to larger pots this w/end. They got about 4 months to go (until our new house is ready) until they are planted into the ground.
I could be mistaken...but they don't look like English Box to me. Fu...what do you think?