I think my new datura is dying. I put this in the ground about 3 weeks ago and it looked nice & healthy then. It came with 3 flower buds & they all bloomed. It produced another bud which also bloomed. Now, all the leaves are starting to turn a sickly yellow. It's in pretty good garden soil, and I gave it a little bone meal when it was planted. It get afternoon sun. Can I bring this back to health?
Datura are essentially weeds and prefer an acid environment .. if the soil is too rich and alkaline it will not be a happy camper. I'm thinking the bone meal which is sometimes used on overly acidic soil to raise pH may be the culprit.
Datura is also in the same family as tomatoes and potatoes, Solanaceae. Try feeding it with some rose or tomato food to lower the pH of the soil. You might also want to take a few cuttings and root them. Datura seems to do best in full blazing hot sun. You'll also want to cut off any seed pods that are forming as seed production takes a lot of the energy out of the plant which can cause rapid decline. I always cut my pods off until mid July and leave 2 or 3 on since the pods make tons of seeds.
X
Poison tomatoes?????? Looks water logged like too much water. They grow here in the desert wild and our soil is really Alkaline, but they look like that if they get over watered. They are not happy then.
looks like spider mites also.
This guy Jerry, who makes all these concoctions and writes books about them, says use hot pepper sauce, jalapeno juice, tbsp of veggie oil and spray the plants with it. Bye bye bugs. Also a blender full of leaves with the insects on them blended up with the oil sprayed on supposedly works too, for some reason. Not tried that but did do the other one.
To everyone,
My Datura seems to have recovered. I gave it a little rose fertilizer & cut back on the watering. It's been doing really great and putting out lots of new flowers. However, a few days ago, I had an attack of hornworms on my tomatoes. Then yesterday, I remembered that daturas are of the same family. I took a close look & could see damage where something had been munching away. While spraying, I found a HUGE hornworm. It was at least 4". I should have taken a picture of that!! They can really move fast. My DH pulled it off the bush & put it on the ground and it started crawling it's way back to the garden. After spraying, it was like it was raining hornworms. Luckily, none were as big as the first fella we found.
Thanks to everyone for their help.
Jo-Ann
Here's some of the damage from the hornworms
Glad it's looking better! Hornworms are a nuisance for sure .. they can strip down a brugmansia in a day! I don't think I've ever seen one on my datura.
Are there short varieties here? The ones that grow in the desert are low and sprawl out more than get tall, they are only white maybe a little lavender tinge to some that I have seen.
