I have a jobotacaba--about 5 feet tall that I dug up from my old place and planted here back in January of 07. After a brief freeze that February, the leaves all began to slowly fall off, but it seemd to hang on. This past winter, the light freeze we had took the remainder o f the leaves. Now, this plants has been sitting for literally MONTHS with no leaves, but it hasn't died either.
I don't get it! It looks like a big skeleton of itself, yet the branches are still green and pliable. I scraped the bark recently to find green once again almost every place I tried except for a few of the extremely thin branch tips
I have tried feeding it this year and ammended the soil around it when I planted it..
Is this plant going to live or die? Any people out there familiar with these plants? Is this some weird "recovery" phase?
Thanks,
Brad
Jabotacaba- HELP!
I don't have this particular plant, but I've had a similar thing happen with some other things I've planted that are borderline on hardiness and get some cold damage. Some of them will send up new sprouts from the base all on their own, others if I prune the branches back a little that has stimulated new growth, and others have just slowly died no matter what I did (even though the scratch test showed green underneath the bark months after the damage occurred).
If you decide to try again with another one, I'd wait until you're past all chance of freezing before you plant it outside--even though they should be hardy in your zone, something that's newly planted is going to be more susceptible to cold damage than something that's well established.
My Jaboticaba partially fell over and lost all leaves after two direct hit hurricanes in 2004, but came back. We worked hard to upright it, mulch etc. After 2005 Wilma (third hurricane in 2 years), the same thing. The leaves fell off, but it was still alive for at least 6 mos., then eventually died.
I loved that tree, even made jelly. Wish I had a happier story.
Here is what it used to look like.
This message was edited Aug 14, 2008 10:39 AM
I almost lost my jaboticaba last year thanks to my neighbor and her round up.
Anyway my tree was pretty sad looking for a while but here is what I did-
I trimmed back the branches to promote new growth and I watered it with some Superthrive. It took a little time but I eventually started to see some new growth.
Good luck and don't give up. They grow really slow so sometimes it can take a while to show signs of improvement.
Superthrive is available at most box stores. I have found it to be very helpful with stressed/sad plants
Here is a link with more info about jaboticabas.
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/jaboticaba.html
Did you take off approx 1/3 of the branches/foliage when you transplanted it? Did you root prune it 2 months prior to moving along with the top pruning?
This would be ideal but often we don't have the time/notice to get plants like this done.
If you've not pruned it, take off maybe 1/4 of the top stems. Best to stay away from chemical fertilizers for a while; superthrive &/or liquid kelp (no fish!) can help.
Thanks for the tips ya'll. I definitely need to prune this plant---don't know why I didn't in the first place. Duuuhhhh! LOL