This information may help some of you Gardenia tree owners. I have a grafted Gardenia tree that I've had for about 12 or 13 years. I named her her Geraldine. She's in about a 20 gallon pot and she lives half the year in Illinois and half the year in Florida. She has always bloomed profusly. Some times she would go thru a period of yellowing leaves and they would drop off. It didn't seem there was any particular reason for it. It was never more than 20% or her total leaves.

We feed her often with water soluble high acid plant food by Mavel. We controled her PH at about 5.5 with Aluminum sulfate. We used Ortho's Orthonex to control the spider mites and other insects.

In around February while we were in Florida her leaves started turning yellow with the edges then turning brown and dropping off. Everything I read said it was probably white flies, scalies,high PH, spidermites, etc. Nothing that was suggested helped.

By the time we came back to Illinois in May she was nearly without any leaves at all. We had all but given up on her. Every leaf that was left was 50% brown and all of her buds were browning and falling off.

I decide that i had nothing to loose so I began trying anything I could think of. I first removed her drip tray thinking she could have a root rot problem. I watered her heavily every few days trying flush her pot of any mold or fungus. She didn't seem to be resonding. I had some Bonide fruit tree spray that I used to control insects and leaf curl plus some other tree dieases on my Peach trees. I sprayed her as directed. I also found a product by Bayer that is a liquid systemic for pest control for trees and shrubs. You mix it with water according to the pot size or trunk size and pour in the soil around the tree. The tree or bush then absorbs it and the tree is protected from plant eating insects.

At this point I didn't have much hope she would make it. Although after about 2 weeks she started to open a few of her dying blosums and I could see new shoots emerging from her branches. It's now about 4 weeks and all the yellowing leaves have fallen off and she has new beautiful green leaves and buds. She has recovered about 50% of her foilage and is blooming regularly.


I hope this will help some of the Gardenia tree owners having similar problems.

Tomcat