What that sick plant is really saying
by Carol Wallace
or the past three years I have been threatening to shovel-prune my trumpet vine that, in the six years since we planted it, has never put out a single flower. Then one day I made the threat in its hearing. The next week it put out nine huge, glorious trumpets.
I have heard tales of plants which flowered after a series of threats by their owners; I never believed them. I assumed (and still do) that the real story here is that the gardener's patience wore thin a wee bit short of the plant's natural cycle. Nevertheless, I spent the next week threatening my non-flowering wisteria. Blossom or die!
What that trumpet vine did was remind me of the basic fact that gardeners all too often forget. Plants want to live. They do everything in their own power to survive--including blooming, if it will keep them from being composted. If they sit in the ground sulking and wilting it's not out of spite. The fact that they linger at all, thrusting out pale, fragile shoots, is a sign that they are trying their best, under difficult circumstances, to survive.
If a plant wilts and wanes, or sits and stagnate, it is more likely the fault of the gardener than that of the plant. The gardener is not listening to what the plant is saying. And plants do talk, in a very nonverbal way. For instance, when they shrivel or wilt, this usually means, in plant-talk, "I'm thirsty." Yellow leaves are often a code for "I'm hungry." Or "I'm drowning." Spots and holes mean there is a problem with insects or disease. If we pay attention to our plants and take care of them the way we would a pet or a family member, they would respond gratefully and begin to thrive again. Ignore them, and the malady can be fatal. Worse still, it could be contagious.
Say your rose bush breaks out in a rash. Little black spots all over the leaves. What do spots mean when they appear on you? You're sick! Same with that rosebush--it has blackspot, which, if you happen to be a nearby rosebush, means you're in danger of getting the same ugly rash. Treat it or lose it! Rosarian Mark Whitelaw points out that strange spots, holes or colors in plant leaves are symptoms of plant problems, just as they are of people problems. They communicate something. So figure out what it's saying and then take appropriate action. The Texas Handbook of Plant Diseases may be of some help.
But what do we do when the plant does nothing very obvious--in fact, it is doing nothing at all? The best advice I ever got about non-thriving plants was: "When in doubt, move it!" Chances are that the plant isn't growing or is growing but not flowering because it is either getting too much or not enough of a good thing.
Case in point: I planted a lavender hedge this spring. All but two plants grew from little one-inch sprigs to bushy shrubs by midsummer. I dig up the two runts only to discover that, a mere half inch under each. was a large rock. They had too much water, there was no drainage. I couldn't pry out that rock -- I think it was the top of the mountain -- so I moved the plants forward several inches and they started to catch up with their brethren.
Actually, I attempted to grow lavender for years before I succeeded. I was planting it in a soil that was almost pure, unadulterated clay. The results were meager. But a plant I stuck in my raised bed garden grew and thrived. Right plant, right place--finally! Of course if I had no place to move it to, I would have had to improve the soil to suit the plant. Improving the soil can only help, as long as the plants in that bed want the kinds of improvements you're making.
Sometimes a plant will give you a clue about its light preferences that is hard to overlook. My husband planted Oriental lilies on the shadier side of the gazebo, then wondered why they were lying down, while the ones on the sunny side were standing erect. ''Just trying to get a little sun on their faces,'' I explained. Plants may grow in the wrong light conditions, but they may lie down on the job.
It's harder to get clues about some soil preferences. My soil is, for the most part, quite acid, except for one area in front of an old stone foundation. There the soil is neutral to alkaline. Rhododendrons aren't happy there; they are happiest when I plant them in the area by my stand of pines, where the needles make the soil particularly acid. But my baby's breath, whose very name (gypsophilia) means ''lime lover'' languishes everywhere but near that wall. It doesn't yellow or give any sign other than refusing to grow beyond the size it was planted at, and an even more dire refusal to return the following year.
One thing that most plants prefer is room to grow. So if your plants look spindly, stretching tall without spreading, they are probably trying to escape the madding crowd. A little judicious thinning can improve the tempers of all the nearby plants and give you new plants for another area of the yard. Like all living things, plants need air. Otherwise they get sick.
So next time you start to get upset with a plant because it just isn't behaving the way you want it to, don't be so quick to consign it to the compost. Stop and listen to what it is saying.
It's saying "I want to live--but you have to help me first."
Carol is a garden writer and college professor in northeast Pennsylvania. She manages the Gardening section of Suite 101.com, where she also writes the column Virtually Gardening.
Technorati Tags: Gardening
