From my window, I gaze across to my neighbor’s yard where I espy the glorious azalea –- harbinger of summer, strong and tall, startling in its intense color. In the yard next to his, more azaleas, burgeoning with a bounty of brilliant blossums. Around the corner, a house half-hidden by hosts of the heavenly-hued hybrid. The neighborhood is ablaze with a profusion of the polychromatic perennials.
In only one yard does the azalea not flourish. That yard is mine. In my yard stands only a single shriveled shoot, less than a foot tall, with four meager blossums. Four springs ago, when first I came to my dwelling, I purchased and planted six of the sublimely shaded shrub. I planted them around the oak tree, where I was assured they would thrive. For their new homes, I dug big holes, and I chopped dirt, and I mulched. I watered them faithfully. By fall, sadly, four of the plants had withered to dust. One hung on pitifully for three years – never growing, never blooming, finally disappearing with the frost and failing to arise again in the spring. The remaining azalea (“Stumpy”) serves only as a sign to the neighbors and to myself that I tried and failed.
Why do you mock me, oh faithless fuchsia flower? The others care little for you – they would thoughtlessly weedwhack you down had you not grown so tall during their neglect. I do not understand your brutal betrayal, and my heart cannot bear to begin anew with you. So I retire to the back yard, to hide from the neighbors, and to seek solace with the crabgrass, which likes my yard just fine.
It sounds like you have about as much skill as I do with plants. No matter what I do, they always die. I’m currently trying to keep a little potted pine tree alive, but I’m not sure how well that’s going.
This is exactly why I don’t want a lawn. Everything would die.
My mom, on the other hand, can make anything grow without even watering it. And this includes the middle of Texas summers! She’ll buy sad little half-dead trees with no leaves, and it’ll start growing and getting all big the next year. Not fair.
Pine straw or mulch, and a sandy or gravelly, well-drained soil. Azaleas like well-drained soil that is quite acidic. Quickest way to kill 'em is clayey or water-retaining soil.
Other than that, I dunno. I prepared a bed with a sandy bottom, rich organic humus in the middle, and a thiiiiick layer of pine straw on top, and they were blooming practically before I had my tools put away.
I rented a house where the backyard had a magnificent display of azaleas.
In this, my bought one, there were a few azaleas in the front, but the problem was that once they’d flowered, the dried-up petals would just sit there, instead of having the good taste to fall off. Made them look extremely yucky most of the time, as none of us had the patience to stand there and pluck off the endless numbers of dried petals.
Needless to say, we dug them out. Don’t miss 'em either.
lainaf, I feel your pain. I cannot grow mold. My mother (how I hate her sometimes) can poke a stick into the ground, water it, talk to it, and will have roses the next day. The woman grows orchids on her bathroom windowsill, fercrissakes.
I have killed cacti. House plants. Outside plants. Bouganvilla. I murdered BOUGANVILLA. Every so often some misguided fool will come to my home, see that I have no plants, and give me one as a gift. Six weeks later, my mother will come rescue it and resucitate it and keep it herself.
I have given up. I am a plant killer. I will never have greenery around my home. Maybe someday I’ll start a rock garden.
Ogre is exactly right about what azaleas need. Look to your soil conditions.
There is no such thing as a green thumb or a black thumb. If you enjoy gardening and take a little trouble to find out plants’ basic requirements, you’re guaranteed to do well with most things.
And to set you apart from the neighbors, lainaf and provide color and interest when your neighbors’ azaleas have quit blooming, try Loropetalum.
Ogre is exactly right about what azaleas need. Look to your soil conditions.
There is no such thing as a green thumb or a black thumb. If you enjoy gardening and take a little trouble to find out plants’ basic requirements, you’re guaranteed to do well with most things.
And to set you apart from the neighbors, lainaf and provide color and interest when your neighbors’ azaleas have quit blooming, try Loropetalum.
What, exactly, does a dead rock look like? I need to know how to distinguish them from the living kind. (Is this anything like the exercise of telling a living from a dead employee at, for instance, your local motor vehicles office? 'Cause then it might be really really hard.)
To boost the acidity of your soil, add coffee grounds to the soil. Azaleas love it! You can get plenty of spent grounds from any Starbucks. Might want to get some PH strips to test the acidity of the grounds you get since it will vary depending which coffees are used. Lots of acidity is removed during the brewing process so, if you decide to use your own coffee grounds, your best bet is to start with higher acidity coffees. Actually, many flowering plants love nitrogen-rich coffee grounds.
I keep trying, I’m a brown thumb as well, but I’m trying my luck with compost this year. Figure if I can kill anything, I should be able to make damn good compost with all that dead organic material. Hey, if you can’t beat 'em, compost 'em!
Q: How do you tell flower from a weed?
A: If you plant it and tend it and water it, and it dies, it’s a flower. If you pull it up by the roots and it grows back, it’s a weed.
Thanks for the support and advice, everyone. I think it’s already too late to plant azaleas here this year, but maybe next year I’ll try it with the coffee grounds. I already compost my coffee grounds, so I should have some nice compost to use for an azalea bed.
Azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons are acid and shade-loving plants. All nurseries should provide specialized plant food for these plants. If they have good drainage, a good bit of shade and some azalea chow once or twice a year, they should do pretty well.
Ours looked sick-o for a couple of years, until we realized our granulated azalea food wasn’t dissolving at all. We checked the date on the bag, and realized it was about twelve years old. The new food seems to do the trick; we put it out six months ago and this spring all three plants were covered in flowers.
If you have lots of clay in your soil like we do here, you need to add gypsum. We did that when we first moved to our house 2 years ago, and my garden is now fantastic, including the azaleas. I can’t even keep a houseplant alive, so my garden is pretty much on its own except for sporadic weeding and yearly mulching.
Another thing that sucks about azaleas is they only last about 2 weeks. They’re pretty but they’re lonnnnnng gone by the time other stuff starts springing up.
Huh … wha … how … I’m cornfuzzled. My azaleas are starting to open now, and they will stay blooming until at least June. And my soil appears to be half clay, half brick pieces, and half hundred-year-old nasty some-kind-of-something mulch. Of course, my mother did plant my azaleas, and I think she included some of her “magic dirt” when she did the planting, but still. Am I the freak?
My mom thought she was a black thumb her whole life, but I gave her some coleus, 'cause it’s pretty easy to grow. From there she branched out (heh) until now she also grows orchids on her bathtub surround. Once she got a feel for what a plant needed in terms of watering, light, drainage, etc. she could use that to figure out all sorts of other plants.
Be a plant whisperer. Liiiiiisten to what the plants want to tell you.
