Help!!! Clematis dying. White soil???

Hi all,

My romana clematis is dying, so I pruned it down and removed it out of the planter. Underneath the clematis is soil with a lot of white particles. I am sure they are not perlite. What happened? Above the soil level, the clematis seems to be overwater, but the soil deep down is not wet at all.

PLEASE HELP!!! What should I do now? The bareroot clematis is laying there. I don't know what I should do to save it.

Thank you for your help. Please, any tip will help.

~Eliza~

Here is the clematis after being removed from the planter. We can see white particles on the roots.

~Eliza~

Hmm, I cannot see the particles that well, but I know what I would do. I would get a bucket of water, maybe add a little dish soap to it, and plunge the roots up & down in it until every trace of that soil was gone. I always use dish soap because it will kill anything that breaths, so if it IS a parasite it might suffocate them. Then I would pot it up in fresh soil & if the top is really as gone as it looks, I would cut it off. then just set it aside & see what happens.
Donna
p.s.
then I would dig out all that contaminated soil in the first pic & bag it up & toss it out. then I would dump that soapy water in the hole.

Looks like that white moldy/fungus-y stuff that grows when soil stays too wet and warm...
We get that a lot here if we use too much mulch. A soil drench fungicide will help.
I'd recommend you take some up to your garden center and have them recommend a product.
Or, you could soak the roots in a mild bleach solution for 5-10 minutes(about a cup to a 5 gallon bucket) and bake the soil in a baking bag...
But, probably better to just start over with new soil...
-T

I was hoping you would pop in Taylor, I had heard about using a bleach solution but never heard what the proportions where. I am putting that info in my file! :~)

hiya Kateliza,

I'm with seedpicker, but my estimated cause of this is a build up of mineral salts in the planter where it was from southern California's nasty tap water. I might suggest that when you replant it that you use a mix with a little more sand and a little less peat moss. Peat has a tendency to collect undissolved salts while sand drains more quickly and salts pass through it more efficiently.

Hope your mom's papaya is doing well. The ones here are three feet tall.

best to you,
don

Hi,

Thank you all for your replies. I just repot the vine, using SuperSoil Potting Soil. I think it's better than mixing the soil myself, since the result of my last soil mix showed that I am no expert. :) I don't want my vine to die. I also moved the vine to a less sunny place. Wish me luck.

Don, the papayas are doing well, but not as well as yours. Three feet, wow, that's awsome. The ones in my garden are only two feet tall. I think the problem is my mom keeps finding a better place for them. She has two on the ground, and two in pots.

~Eliza~

I don't have a huge amount of experience growing clematis, but I do have a couple of ramona plants myself and one got cut back to the root ball twice this growing season.. the second time I thought it was gone but yesterday it showed a totally new sprout from a different location on the root ball.

My tidbit is that I've heard a few times that clematis like their feet cool... so what about planting some low-ish growing annual plants around the base? Also the less sunny location might do the trick.

The people that lived at my house a while ago used to have a lot of fires in the back or dumped ashes a lot... I keep hitting spots that are just a layer of ash underground and when I dig it up it does look like large white particles, very close to your first photo; but I haven't seen any dead plants that turn up with white roots. Hope you can save her!

I also have a problem with white stuff in the ground sometimes. It also has a very chemical odor. I cannot plant anything in that area after it occurs. I don't think it is natural. I have lost butterfly bushes, hosta and lamium to it. I also noted that there were large white ant hills nearby. I wonder if ants have anything to do with it since they are all over. Hope we get an answer as to what to do about it.
Susan