Pushing leaves out...

I've had a similar problem on many different types of plants in my yard.
Notably, hibiscus and dogwood.  The hibiscus lost all their leaves upon
transplant shock and while the wood is still very green, and the leaf
nodes (where they'd be) look OK, they JUST WON'T put out leaves.  It's
getting hot, but they like it warm.  They get enough water but not too
much.  I've fertilized them moderately but not heavily.

On the dogwood, it lost all its leaves upon planting late last fall.
This I expected since the tree goes dormant anyway.  We had a very mild
winter.  This spring, it looks like the stem tips are attempting to
leaf or flower out, but no dice.  The leaves? look burned.  So I took
a risk and transplanted into deeper shade.  I was horrified to see that
the root system was VERY small and had not grown at all over winter.
This soil is very good and loose (we also had plenty of rain, which sent
many things skyrocketing).

Now, in more shade, the stems are still green but no leaves.  :-(

I've had many things lose their leaves after transplant or stress, and I
wonder what to do.  I tend to provide shade, not too much water or too
little, and potassium to stimulate the root system.  Or is that wrong?
Nitrogen with no leaves seems weird and might encourage rot.  Or should
I use nitrogen?

I may ask this question on various lists that some of you may also
subscribe to, so bear with me -- there are only two more (GARDENS-L
and the hibiscus list).

Thanks for any help.

-- 
Amy Moseley Rupp (amyr@austx.tandem.com)  Austin, TX, USDA z8b, Sunset z30
Amy Moseley (amy@ece.utexas.edu) Graduate Student in Software Engineering
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PERENNIALS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index