This little joker has hated life since I started him from a seed. He did this much growth in the original pot, but has not grown a whit since the spring. Now the leaves are turning brown. I did spray him with baking soda/dish soap/water solution (1 tsp. soda/3 drops soap/1 gal. water) last weekend. He's worse. I've seen camellias get rusty looking spots in the fall, but this doesn't look the same.
I wouldn't give up on it yet--when you first plant things out in the garden they'll often take much of that first season getting their roots going and not doing much growing, hopefully it should take off for you next year. I can't see the spots on your leaves that clearly, but one thing you might try is making sure to water in the morning instead of the evening, and be careful not to let water splash back up on the leaves while you're watering. There are sometimes fungal spores in the soil, and if they splash back up on the leaves and then the leaves stay wet for a long time, then you can get fungal spots on the leaves.
2nd pic
I thought that I'd met all of the local plant-eating fungi... I'm afraid that he may not have any green left on his leaves at the rate that this is progressing.
I'll be patient and hope for the best. I'm having the darnedest time trying to get the orange blossom smell. Orange trees are tiny and look bad, limes won't bloom, mock orange is large but has no smell at all, and this was the only seed in this bunch to germinate.
I personally think the plant was a little on the tiny side to plant outside. If it were mine, I would pot it back up and baby it. And not plant it outside until it is much bigger.
I'll take that into consideration. I don't use any type of fertilizer (other than an excellent homemade potting mix) and so many things just sit in the pot for months without any growth that I try to plant out most things. That usually does the trick, but obviously not this time.
Why no fertilizer?
Considering that we're starting from a pure white beach sand base, when I do amend the soil well enough to get worms, I don't want to do anything to mess them up, and I do usually use some of our native "soil" in my planting mix. Also, I proscribe to the 'soil as a whole living system' idea.
This works okay with plants in the grounds. They grow here, but slowly and usually don't bloom. I've spent a fortune in potting soil, mushroom compost, and cow manure, plus we provide our own ash, compost, chopped up leaves, etc. Planting well in the beginning and top dressing twice a year has made a remarkable difference - but back to the pots.
I start a lot from seeds. Let's say, 50% of the pots germinate and grow quickly enough to set up within a few months. Another 25% grow slowly, but still I'm patient with them because I can see a difference week to week. Then there is the remaining 25% who germinate, get to about an inch tall, and don't grow anymore. Sometimes, I can plant them out and they take off, but some still just sit. For example, I started Nicotiana from seed. The plants were about a half-inch in a pot for the best part of a year. My patience finally wore completely out and I finally in desperation planted them out, tiny as they were. Now they're growing. So I tried this with poor little OJ - I started him last year. He had put on all of the leaves that he presently has, so I put him in the ground. He stopped growing. Transplant shock, I thought, so I waited...six months later, still nothing, so I put him back in a pot. Still nothing for a long time, so finally back in the ground. I think he had a touch of the brown when he was still in the pot, but it's progressing. So if he does die, I at least know that I really tried.
I can understand reluctance to use synthetic fertilizers if you're concerned about the soil, but there are plenty of organic fertilizers out there that you could use. If your garden soil is in decent shape you may not need to do a lot of fertilizing there, but I bet you would find the things in pots do better if you give them some fertilizer.
I'll do some tests with seedling pots this fall. One-fourth or one-half dilution, right?
I usually give them 1/4 strength once they get their first true leaves, then move up to 1/2 strength when they get a little bigger.
Plants need nutrition to grow and nutrition to bloom. Starting with sand is starting with -zero- and you have a long way to go. Mushroom compost, ash, and cow manure all tend to be alkaline too. Maybe you could get a pH test on your mixture to see if that's a problem... A soil test through your local Cooperative Extension Service is a good way to find out if your formulation is lacking, or over the top in some area. Either can be deleterious to plants' growth.
I use a lot of cottonseed meal in my garden, along with my own compost made from leaves, grass, etc, and top it all with pine bark mulch. We have healthy plants with lots of bloom, and lots of healthy worms too.
I'm done a lot of experimentation and am pretty confident at this point about my soil amendments. I mix in a tote: twenty pounds of potting soil (a lovely dark mix with a lot of bark), ten pounds of black cow, ten pounds of mushroom compost, four big handfuls of chopped up leaves (with leaf mold if I've collected it), maybe a third of a shovelful of ash/charcoal (earthworms for some reason love charcoal), several shovelfuls (usually six to eight) of our sand, and a third of a five gallon bucket of our homemade compost. Quite a recipe, huh? I dig large holes with a post-hole digger and, by the time I'm done, generally half of the flowerbed is my mix and half still sand. As I said, I top dress each plant twice a year with this same mix and remulch. It's took me two years to get all of this figured out because I was a new gardener when I moved here and this sand just had me stumped. Plants looked stunted and wouldn't bloom, so I read and researched (and found DG), eventually learning what needed to be done.
I have taken it from too acid to too alkaline a time or two on hydrangea, gardenia, and such, and have learned from my mistakes. I do have a fish emulsion/alfalfa/epson salt mixture in a barrel for a foliar spray, but probably don't use it enough more than once every few months because everyone complains about the smell. I mulch heavily with both grass clippings, which I know can act as a fertilizer, and oak/pine straw. Now when I dig in established beds, I find a two inch layer of broken down mulch and plenty of worms. I never saw any in the beginning. I think the biggest realization that I had to come to was that I will never be done. I can never stop dressing or mulching, but I'm confident that I will continue to see improvement every year.
BTW, I scoured my Garden Problem Solver book this evening and found a photo of a fungal leaf spot that matches this one exactly. Water very well may be a contributing factor. I generally water low, not taking rain into account, but likely wet the plant because it's so low because it takes an hour and a half when we have to water. Poor little fellow is near the end of the run and I'm exhausted at that point. I plan to dig him up tomorrow, put him in a nice morning sun spot and hope for the best. If he croaks, c'est la vie. I'll buy some more seed. This is a hard time of year anyway. The crepe myrtle and peas have aphids, the hackberry has mealybugs, and there seem to be webworms everyday. With cooler weather, everything will get better.
Yes, I'm a plant nerd, but a happy one.
