my plants are dying all the sudden

Discussion in 'Small Space Gardening' started by shellegirl82, May 28, 2009.

  1. shellegirl82

    shellegirl82 Member

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    my mom split some of her plants last fall for me and i transplanted them this year to my garden. these included some lillies irisis some columbine and seedum, blue fesque and some silver mound. im so sorry if i mis spelled those. but after i planted them they all were doing so very well, growing fast and very green. now all the sudden half of them have started to die. wilt and turn yellow then brown and then die. i have nooo idea why..can anyone help??
     
  2. Vera eastern wa

    Vera eastern wa Active Member

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    From the description it sounds too me like over-watering is the issue.
     
  3. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    Or the opposite, this being the time of year when it starts to get hot.
     
  4. Mister Green

    Mister Green Active Member

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    Not that I'm an expert at this but it might be interesting to know which half of the plants are turning brown. Just certain species or just certain areas.
     
  5. shellegirl82

    shellegirl82 Member

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    well it seems like half is mostly on one side. the side that gets sun in the am and then againin the afternoon. i thought maybe it was casue they were getting to much sun..but that wouldnt make sence, my mom had them all in full sun where they got shade when the sun went down. it is a pretty wet area but they were doing so well when i first planted them which was when the soil was wet all the time. now that it is not like that i water them once a day..i thought maybe they were over or under watered but they were growing fine in wet soil. the soil is the same and they are not doing so good anymore....my lillies and irisis seem to be doing the best and the daphodils did well. its the columbine and and the seedum blue fesque and silver mound that are dying..at the moment
     
  6. shellegirl82

    shellegirl82 Member

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    ok so i just noticed that my irises are now turning brown on teh other side of the yard...after thinking abou tit..i sprayed a weed killer in my garden and by those irises. but it said that it was safe for your garden...is this what could be killing my plants???
     
  7. janetdoyle

    janetdoyle Active Member 10 Years

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    I'm afraid so. Weed killer is not the way to "weed" a garden -- it is only useful in certain situations with clearing driveway cracks of weeds, a section of earth not a garden where a no-residue weed-killer is used to treat really bad weed infestations, etc.

    Keep that stuff out of your garden. Wind can blow the spray or droplets onto other plants, and depending on the type of weed-killer it can stay in the soil for a bit, so that digging in it afterwards contaminates other plants. Plus depending on what type it is, it is thought to cause various serious illnesses in humans and animals.

    Other readers may have some suggestions as to how to recover from this. In some regions [like mine] people have become very aware of weed-killer's disadvantages, and the local governments have regulated what can be sold. "Round-Up" is considered not too bad, doesn't stay in the soil, but no one here would use it as a casual method of weeding.
     
  8. shellegirl82

    shellegirl82 Member

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    if this is what is killing them...will it just kill them for this season or is the plant done..as in will not come back next year? it was the round up. im new to the whole gardening thing and this was a very hard lesson learned, just makes me sad that i did that..
     
  9. janetdoyle

    janetdoyle Active Member 10 Years

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    It may be ok if the plant is sturdy, and I believe that the soil actually de-activates Round-Up's action if the soil is scattered about on it -- it does not make sense to me, but I read this somewhere, so it sounded as though once soil is stirred up and touches the affected plant, with the Round-up on it, that it may stop its action. As I said, it makes no sense, but it's worth a try. Maybe cutting off the damaged portions would help, as well. If they are perennials with some root clumps left, it may be all right. Well, we learn these things best through experience, don't we. If your mother has any plants left to divide, get some more from her in a little while, after you have seen how much has been lost. You know, we resist sometimes believing that the people who are "anti" these chemicals, anti- this and anti- that, thinking they are extremists, and are untrustworthy -- but in actual fact herbicides are dangerous and the labels should be clear about how much damage they can do. They have just a very limited use and should not be considered a garden aid. There was an ingredient now largely banned called 2-4-D which was used as a defoliant or green plant killer by the military in Vietnam, they wanted to minimize hiding places in the jungle for guerilla fighters, and then we discovered that some of the people affected by it, or who used it, both Vietnamese and the military, were being sickened by everything from leukemia to other serious diseases. I worked with a young man about 15 years ago who was keen on spreading "Weed'n Feed" [then, it did have 2-4-D in it] on his lawns and spent a lot of time talking about doing this, you know, saying things like "well, I have to go home tonight and put weed'n feed on, and mow the grass... I remember saying to him, "Terry, don't use that stuff, it causes leukemia..." unforunately, within 3 or 4 years he actually did come down with a very dangerous form of leukemia and lived only about a year after first having it. Surely that wasn't the reason, but you have to wonder...

    I run into this problem fairly commonly in the condominium townhouse complex I live in, usually from someone who has never been a gardener, really, and who mourns the fact that a valuable shrub has died and then, in conversation, I find out that they used a weed-killer once on the weeds around it... they look unbelievingly at me when I say, "don't use that stuff ever, except for driveway cracks... you could damage several gardens that way, including mine, as I am downhill from you ..." A little knowledge of biology helps, and the fact that leaves absorb these weed-killer chemicals and they enter the plant's system to the root zone; and, a little goes a long, long way -- it can be splashed so easily on plants you want to keep. Never mind, read up on gardening and you will gradually learn more and more. You should find a good basic gardening book from your local public library, and ask a librarian for assistance in finding it, a really good one, which goes into all the various activities of gardening, from weeding [unfortunately, usually it is just a matter of pulling out those weeds by hand or with an old-fashioned hoe or some other garden tool], to "mulching" which helps to keep down weeds just through sufficient cover from sun to discourage them [mulching is spreading ground bark mulch or any, preferably aged compost around near the plants you want to keep -- it keeps the soil from drying out and provides enough cover to prevent weeds from growing from the seeds naturally in the soil...]. Another way of thinking about all of this is that weeds show the soil is rich, that it can grow things -- they are not evil, they are just unwanted plants!
     
  10. shellegirl82

    shellegirl82 Member

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    well thank you for all the information you have provided. i guess we have great soil casue the garden is full of these unwanted plants..makes itr very hard to keep up. i feel like i pull one and then the next day there are two in its place twice as high! but fro now on i will either live with them lol or just pull them the old fashion way :) but again thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions!! im putting in my veggie garden today and hope that it goes as smoothly as last year!
     
  11. woodschmoe

    woodschmoe Active Member 10 Years

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    If you weed once, and lay down a good thick layer of wood chip mulch, you'll greatly ease your workload.
     
  12. shellegirl82

    shellegirl82 Member

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    yeah i did lay some of that down, hopefully i used enough
     
  13. planterlady

    planterlady Member

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    Sounds to me like too much water - the ground was very wet to start with and you were watering as well. Just stop watering and perhaps move the plants to "higher" ground if you can. As for the Iris, the weed killer does kill more than just weeds - let's be good to the plant and stop using those insecticides!
     
  14. justoneofu

    justoneofu Member

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    You really seem to know what your talking about so here goes. I have a male and female kiwi and the leaves are turning black and dieing. Searching the net, I have come up with something called Stemphylium botryosum! If this is what my plants have, what is the solution?
    Thank you for your time. I'm new to this forum.
     
  15. janetdoyle

    janetdoyle Active Member 10 Years

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    I don't have the detailed knowledge on that one, and I am basically a beginner too, just have learned some basics from experience, so I couldn't answer your question -- especially since I don't know kiwi. Ron B is one of the really specialized people re shrubs and vines on this forum, along with kaspian, look for their posts in Vines and in Woody Plants and correspond there... good luck! That is really their subject.
     

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