Plants from Hill - The second lot is Dying too

Hi,

This is my second attempt to raise the 2 unknown varieties ( 3 plants) I have bought from a Plant Fair in Kolkata, India.

1. The last lot was exactly the same and was doing well for sometime .. Bought in early Jan kept in shade .. watered .. but they died in Mid March.

2. The current one (i shared the pics below) are bought in early Feb and were Ok till March end... I dont know their name either as this is new species in Kolkata, West Bengal ( Climate is hot and humid).. The plants were probably raised in Kalimpong ( West Bengal) whic is hilly area, part of Hiumalaya and were in ""Green of Health" when i brought them.

I keep them in bright place with direct sunlight for less than 1.5 hrs.. sprinkle water regularily on the leafs as well...
After seeing the current state i am shocked and fear they will also not survive...... is their any life saving drug for plants..
Today I have sprayed Bavistin ( Fungicide on leaf and on the root.. )

Have also bought Moss to place on the Soil to see whether the natural cooling helps them as they come from Hills....

Please help me save my second lot of Plants..

i love them and want to save them









Yogesh

It may not be your fault, but the fault of whoever potted those plants. The soil they are in looks awful. It MIGHT help if you could repot into a larger-grained, fast-draining soil, but it also might make things worse, depending on what the plant is and whether it might already be too far gone.

I'm afraid there's no magic potion that can cure a plant.

Hi .

The Soil in the 2 similar plants is same when I bought.. i didnt touched or removed the soil fearing disturbing the original soil ....

The taller, Juniper like Coniferous is in Vermi Compost....

the plants come from a colder place and the place I live is Hot and Humid.. though I only let the early morning sunlight to fall on them and try  to keep the roots wet.

regards,
Yogesh

yogesh wrote:I ... try to keep the roots wet.

I suspect this is your problem; i.e., that the roots are too wet. The roots must get air (oxygen, specifically) to live. When the soil is too wet, the roots literally drown. Judging by what I see in your pictures, it may be too late for these plants, but try watering a lot less often. The soil should not be gummy nor stick to your finger when you poke it into (or lightly dig across the surface of) the soil before you water again.

It would be easier for you if you used an inorganic medium but people do grow plants in pots of plain dirt similar to what you are trying to do. The secret is to water infrequently (i.e., only when needed - the soil feels dry) and when you do water, water heavily so that oxygen is pulled into the soil as the water drains through the pot. You must change the soil if water will not drain through fairly rapidly (watch it drain - if you are bored and want to go do something else before the water has drained, the soil should be changed to a 'looser mix').

The Soil in the 2 similar plants is same when I bought.. i didnt touched or removed the soil fearing disturbing the original soil ....

I understand, but that soil is so awful, you should have changed it. As Osoyoung says, the soil so fine it hold too much water.

The third image above looks to me like a pair of Sawara Cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera) with new growth at the tips and die back of lower shoots. If this is the case then all may not be lost. Total removal of the entire soil mass might be too much of a shock even though the Sawara is normally a pretty tough cookie - so I would suggest removal from the existing containers, washing / raking out of the outer 1/3rd of the rootball (if it has a rootball - which hopefully it has) and repotting in a larger (at least 1/3 larger) container with a very free draining medium - in the hope that new root growth may save the trees if it occurs. I would use pure fired clay particles (akadama) - although a mix with no more than 1/3 organic soil would probably also be OK. It may be that they need some feeding. Opinions differ on whether to feed trees which have had their roots pruned but it may be an option to incorporate some slow release fertiliser into the new soil mix. If the soil is currently wet it may be best to keep watering to a minimum until the soil has dried out a bit and then focus on watering the free draining area more than the untouched area to try and encourage root growth. Misting the foliage would also help whilst keeping the soil on the less-than-wet side.

thank you All...
I have no option on soil here... so will mix gravel and coarse material which we can get from old construction...
Will wash away the top soil without taking the plant out and fill some vermiCompost as it is organic , light and doesnt get compact with time..

Already have sprayed Fungicide and also given some to its roots..

Have put some wet moss and let watering on roots as suggested..

Also we have alkaline soil here and the hilly/mountain plants love acidic soil if i am not wrong .. so will look for something to make the the soil a little acidic.,...

Yogesh

Chamyciperus are difficult to keep in almost any climate. However after looking at your photos everyone seems to want to default to making the determination that the trees are too wet when in actuality one of the photos clearly shows the soil and it looks too dry.

Vance you are right .. I mist the roots but the soil always look dry... . U said they r difficult to grow  in general or specifically in tropical climate.
Thanks

Chamaecyparis pisifera are thirst plants but they are n't difficult to care for. The only difficult thiing about them is that they are difficult to impossible to make back bud. There are some good specimens' on bonsai forums so take a wider look and ask people who have them some questions.

  

I think that your statement "the plants come from a colder place and the place I live is Hot and Humid" is the answer to your problem. Plants need what they are used to. If you could keep them cool, they would probably thrive. Instead of collecting things from different climate zones, try to use plants that enjoy your own climate.

Kev Bailey wrote:I think that your statement "the plants come from a colder place and the place I live is Hot and Humid" is the answer to your problem. Plants need what they are used to. If you could keep them cool, they would probably thrive. Instead of collecting things from different climate zones, try to use plants that enjoy your own climate.

yes Kev you are right.. i keep them as cool as possible.. i have kept them in my room window so that they get cooling from my AirConditioner  throuout the night ..
its very very depressing.... i see them nearing death every morning and evening .. i will never bring one from Hills to get killed again..
 

the one u seee in the profile pic is also bought along with them.......

my 2 cents:

I feel something is wrong with the soil too.
It doesn't have a natural look.
It appears too dry, semi-hardened.

yogesh wrote:

Kev Bailey wrote:I think that your statement "the plants come from a colder place and the place I live is Hot and Humid" is the answer to your problem. Plants need what they are used to. If you could keep them cool, they would probably thrive. Instead of collecting things from different climate zones, try to use plants that enjoy your own climate.

yes Kev you are right.. i keep them as cool as possible.. i have kept them in my room window so that they get cooling from my AirConditioner  throuout the night ..
its very very depressing.... i see them nearing death every morning and evening .. i will never bring one from Hills to get killed again..
 

the one u seee in the profile pic is also bought along with them.......

This is possibly your problem on two levels.  You are trying to cultivate temperate plants in a near tropical climate where it is obviously too hot and humid.  This is enough to kill a lot of trees, it's like trying to gorw tropical plants in Alaska.  To add insult to injury you are trying to grow them indoors where you believe you can keep them cool.  Temperate trees cannot be cultivate long term in and indoor invironment.

Probably Yes.... thanks anyways for your kind words

Jim, Mk, Rolex,Vance, Kev, John thanks a lot..

MK you seeems to know abt this species quit well.. they two sawara cypress are stil fighting to survive.. every morning i wake up and before i go to sleep i check their health .. hope they come out of crisis..

you and others pointed out rightly that the soil is dry .... despite my statement that i try top keep them wet....
i hv put the self cooling moss on one of them...

i will nt give up and will learn how to grow them well....

Good luck to you. I hate to bring this up but they are going to need a dormant period this winter also.

Here are some pics of the trees you have.
This is a Cryptomeria japonica, Japanese White Cedar




And this is your Chamaecyparis pissifera, Boulavard Cypress.


Neither of these trees are 'native' to southern Oregon, but they do very well here. You know what I can't grow here? Ficus and other tropical trees that flourish in your local. I do have a couple of ficus and a bunch of crassula, but I have to make special condituions to grow these where I live. Primarily they have to come indoors for the winter or they would not survive.

You can not do this with temperate climate trees as indoor climate is a death sentence for most of these trees. You say these come from the hills. Were they growing naturally or cultivated?

The question about whether a dormant period is required or not is an interesting one. Most conifers are hardy i.e. can survive at low temperatures, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they need a cold period to survive. For example, there are plenty of junipers and pines growing in the southern Mediterranean that never see frost and see temperatures up in the 30's in summer - but which survive cold winters elsewhere. I have a juniper grown from seed collected in Cyprus (which rarely sees anything below 10 degrees Celsius in Cyprus) that has happily survived outside for two English winters as a seedling and is growing well. There are also other examples - Cedar of Lebanon, etc. So it is not automatically the case that a dormant period is definitely required for conifers and only experimentation will confirm this for a particular species.

The key with the Sawara is to keep it in most but well drained soil, with regular feeding and foliage misting in high temperatures to keep the foliage green. It may be that without a dormant period they will eventually die, but its worth keeping going to get everything else right and to then see what happens over time.

Good luck!

JT - MKBonsai

MKBonsai wrote:The question about whether a dormant period is required or not is an interesting one. Most conifers are hardy i.e. can survive at low temperatures, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they need a cold period to survive. For example, there are plenty of junipers and pines growing in the southern Mediterranean that never see frost and see temperatures up in the 30's in summer - but which survive cold winters elsewhere. I have a juniper grown from seed collected in Cyprus (which rarely sees anything below 10 degrees Celsius in Cyprus) that has happily survived outside for two English winters as a seedling and is growing well. There are also other examples - Cedar of Lebanon, etc. So it is not automatically the case that a dormant period is definitely required for conifers and only experimentation will confirm this for a particular species.

The key with the Sawara is to keep it in most but well drained soil, with regular feeding and foliage misting in high temperatures to keep the foliage green. It may be that without a dormant period they will eventually die, but its worth keeping going to get everything else right and to then see what happens over time.

Good luck!

JT - MKBonsai

Uh. O.K. Good luck too then. I still think it's byebye Sawara. What do I know. Probably because I have a couple of these and some Hinokis too. I live in Michigan where I own temperate trees that need a dormant rest period. The ones we're talking about must be the tropical false cypresses. My bad.

M.Frary - you could well be right - it would be useful if anyone knows for sure as I certainly wouldn't bet either way!

JT

It will be interesting to find out. I hope for the O.P.'s sake I'm wrong cause he sure is trying his hardest to keep them alive.

just a quick note from a novice re: watering...

in my novices classes, the instructor has well over 20 years of experience and beautiful trees...
he uses the simplest method of determining if a tree needs water:

after watering, take a chop-stick or bamboo skewer and stick it down into the soil
(pretty much as far as you can) and leave it there.
next day or so, pull it out and if its still wet, dont water.
if it is dry or barely damp, go ahead and water.
always returning the stick to the pot and leaving it in to check every day or so...
(unless showing the tree of course)

and remember: a shallow pot holds more water than a deep pot !
which i found surprising, but the science is solid.

(sometimes we gather so much knowledge that we forget the simple things)

kevin

I used to use shiskabob skewers because they are smaller in diameter.

M. Frary wrote:  I used to use shiskabob skewers because they are smaller in diameter.

ditto and still do for my mame/shohin...
i tried the metal ones, but they didnt work so good