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Friday - April 16, 2010

From: Austin, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Planting, Transplants, Herbs/Forbs
Title: Damaged newly planted Gaura in Austin
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

Hello yet again! This past Friday we attended the plant sale where we got lots of goodies to start a new bed. The plants were all planted on Sunday. All of them are doing fine, even beginning to produce new blooms in some cases, except for the Gaura Lindenheimeri. It was completely fine last night, then this morning (about 12 hours after I had last looked at it) I went out to find it darkened and shriveled and no longer upright. It was a gallon plant. I, of course, immediately triple checked the sun and soil needs and nothing seems amiss there. But, what on earth would cause it to have such a radical change in health so quickly?! I poked around for possible nearby snails or other critters, but did not find any. Do you know of any common, or even uncommon, causes of a sudden change in a newly planted plant?

ANSWER:

Well, everybody here is baffled, too. Our Nursery and Gardens staff and volunteers are very particular about the conditions of the plants that are put on sale in our semi-annual Plant Sale. Poison pellets are never inserted into the soil just to give customers a surprise. We have two theories. The first is that we know the Gaura does not like being transplanted. It has a long carrot-like taproot which permits the plant to survive drought. It's possible that root got broken in the process. Another possibility, although kind of remote, is that a too-generous dose of fertilizer into the hole when the plant was put in the ground might have shocked the roots a bit. Ordinarily, we recommend no fertilizer at all for native plants in their own territory, as they are already acclimated to the soils there.

And speaking of remote possibilities, from the first we thought of animal damage; that is, a dog or cat making a pit stop there.

From Conditions Comments in Native Plant Database:

"Open vase-shaped plant, branches arching in many directions. Leaf color is dark green in summer, and red, gold or purple in the fall. The flower, white fading pink, has only a few flowers open at a time with new ones opening as stalks grow throughout most. Flowers open in early morning. Tolerant of high heat. Flower fragrance has sometimes been compared to cat urine."

We have absolutely no proof that is what happened, but it's a possibility that some other cat or dog came around to deposit their own scent, saying, in effect: "So, there!"

Having tap-danced all around your problem, we suggest you treat this as transplant shock. Trim off the damaged upper area, as much as 1/4 to 1/3 of the upper parts of the plant. No more fertilizer and hopefully it will come back and do fine.

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