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Salvia query

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---I live in New Zealand, where Salvia is still legal, but if this thread can't be here, then poof it away mods, thanks---

So the other day, after watching my Salvia for months and spraying it religiously with water for ages, and buying it its own fertilizer (general purpose osmocote), I'm beginning to realize that something must be horribly wrong - as it's just growing so slowly, and the leaves are curling and browning at the edges.

So I thought hard about it, and then I realized that it must be the water. I noticed white crusty rings on many of the pots. So... there must be savage amounts of lime in the water. Now I want to ask, what's the best way to lower the soil pH? I don't want to shock the plant.

Here's a photo of it, looking worse for wear after accidentally being blasted with hot car air on a journey this afternoon:
The top leaf is missing because I was hoping that removing it would spur branching, as I'd be happy to just start again with this plant.

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated - as I obviously need it. smile.gif




salvia.jpg

Edited by planthelper

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---I live in New Zealand, where Salvia is still legal

 

Damn you and your freedom ! :)

That little baby of yours - can you describe the environment it's living in ? I would imagine that NZ would be pretty cold right now.

S.divinorum has been seen (by SWIM?) to flourish in temperate conditions, with filtered sunlight and a regular misting in the hot periods. She seems to enjoy a more humid house also.

What sort of conditions can you manipulate to get the best out of your Sally ? Potentially you could grow a very big plant out of a 200mm pot.

Edited by Psylo Dread

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The browning/curling of the leaves can happen when acclimatizing a plant to a new environment and from strong light/heat.

Looks like she could do with a repotting, Sally gets rootbound very fast.

Not sure about how to go about lowering the pH, sorry.

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just general info from what i have seen & read

It looks fairly healthy other than the slight leaf curl & browning, a little more light wouldn't hurt maybe

You could take a cutting from the top & the lower half will re shoot from the lower nodes & thicken up

Outer (thinner) edges of leaves seem to be effected first by soil & PH, humidity & heat cold, from the info i have seen online

Edited by mac

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Have heard of that happening when too much fertilizer is used. That could also be the cause of the precipitation.

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From what I've read, this species is a bit of a 'whinebag' anyway. Perhaps in the ground hardened off to ambient humidity would be the way to go. Most plants tend to do better outdoors in the gorund, than indoors in pots.

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media looks dry. salvia need wet feet. and the occasional misting of foliage. mine always grew best in the cooler months. i always found it relatively easy to cultivate ??cut back the leaves by 1/2 and keep moist. new foliage should emerge. research sally care.

Edited by incognito

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to lower PH buy some PH Down.

Or i believe citric acid(lemon juice would do) it a decent substitute, make sure you have something to test the ph before watering though (just a little hydro dripper set would do)... also test the PH of the water flowing out the base after a few waters at the desired level until you can balance it appropriately.

I would think that just balancing some tap water to a standard PH and flushing as one would a MJ plant would also help level out the PH.

note: I am not PARTICULARLY experienced with growing sally just offering advice to lowering PH.

note2: what sort of sally is that ? last one i had was wasson hoffman and the stems looked completely different

edit: water as normal to get a gauge of what the current ph is from the run off and slowly adjust it down by less than .5 of a PH point per week. Keep in mind that ph goes in multiples of 10 so it is VERY easy to shock the plant when changing.

Edited by DarkSpark

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media looks dry. salvia need wet feet.

 

When they're too dry the leaves droop, not curl. Most people I've talked to get best results by letting the soil dry out and watering when (or just before) the leaves start to droop.

Edited by ballzac

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Have heard of that happening when too much fertilizer is used. That could also be the cause of the precipitation.

 

Try collecting some rainwater, its a great cure for hard water or fert problems with any plant

Edited by mac

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you will never need to mist that sucker in NZ imo. The main reason to do this is on those 30*c days were the water in the substrate isnt enough to keep it from dehydrating. Atm, swim has one growing in the ground near a compost heap and its strangely the healthiest of them allp and anyone in victoria knows that the frost these days is pretty bad, and enough to normally kill a sally left outside without protection.

Sallys need to be looked after but not babied. Your sally looks fine for one that hasnt been aclimatized yet and that is still being misted. The old growth may turn brown and fall off, but new growth will be strong and will survive not being misted. Save the leaves that fall off, as the are still active ;) its common for a sally with a good root system to tur completely black ontop and apear dead when exposed to a new environment, but it will soon push up a shoot from beneath the soil and this shoot will become stronger then the last! It scary tho..

as mentioned, she may be pot bound so taking her out, teasing the roots, and putting in a new bigger pot with more soil is a good idea.

They tend to grow slower in winter and with smaller leaves in winter and man is a NZ winter cold!

I doubt there is a nutrient problem but when you repot it, this may normalize the nutrients. She loves wet feet, especially in warmer weather (+20*c) but it may be wise to keep the soil just moist in temps colder then this to avoid fungal problems. Swims had them rot from too much water in winter, but with a good root system, they always survived. :)

edit: oh and droopy leaves are pretty common and not a bad thing. This wont hurt the plant. Wilted leaves will if left untreated. Be sure to know the difference ;) wilting is usually due to severe dehydration and a good flooding is in order imo. This only realy happens when its hot tho.

Edited by ubza_1234

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Ten different answers, lol. You're gonna have to pick a name out of a hat BM :bootyshake:

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i only just looked properly at the pic :P my bad. Notice that the new growth is alot heathier then the older, lower leaves? This is because the new growth is aclimatized and the lower leaves are not so they are dying. This is fine remember, as the new growth will survive just fine. Like most plants, the old leaves will fall off as it grows, with new leaves being bigger in size.

The deformed bumpy leaves are of concern tho, swim has only had this on sallys grown in too much sun. They will grow faster in lots of sun, but will grow smaller leaves that are less potent for there weight made obvious by the lack of that pretty sally satin shean on the leaves ;) dont be afraid of growing in shade, it will grow just fine there once the heat picks up after winter. Summer is her time to shine!

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hmm, i explained my version not to long ago in another thread.

when sally gets the leaf curl and doesn't grow much, just keep her well maintained (meaning don't do anything in excess to the plant, with the hope you help her getting better).

they might take 8 weeks to recover and to start growing again, but they will.

but if you give her suddenly too much sun, water, or fertilizer she will suffer even more more.

this problem fixes itselfe in given time, don't worry, i have seen those symptoms with plants in the uk and other euro countries and aswell in australia, before it became illegal.

sometimes, she recovers from those deformed leaves, just to have an other outbreak soon after.

but once those symptoms go away, sally will grow fast and needs big pot's and lot's of nourishment.

you can use sulfur (gardening section hardware) to lower the ph, but it's very slow acting,

you are better off, using an acid lovers potting mix.

rich compost and manure pellets can and will lower the ph often aswell, but again, this process takes time.

if one looks at sally photos, but i only speculate that, one can sometimes spot a tingle of yellow coloring with the leaves of otherwise very well nurtured plants, this might, very well happen because the potting mix is not acidic enough.

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Thanks for all the replies everyone. I'll be going through these with a fine-tooth comb and deciding what to do to save the plant. It already looks better the last few days, as I've been bringing water home from places where it's decent water. And I already added some sulfur to the top of the soil. :)

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hey my plant used to do that and i kept losing leaf after leaf, bigger pot? and rain water?

maybe take a cutting if you have any off shoots just to be safe.

gud luck!

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Repotted the salvia today. I reckon the old soil had very poor drainage. The soil didn't smell good. It also had a much smaller rootmass than I thought it had, so I hope it's not too overwhelmed in its new pot.

Also, astonishingly, another cutting from almost 3 months ago has finally rooted. It was a much bigger cutting, but it went into the same boggy soil as the photographed plant, and quickly rotted. So I cut it again, and it's been sitting in water (it's only about an inch long) for about 3 months. Somehow, despite even having a mild bug infestation (little white maggot-like bugs eating the leaves), it has survived, and managed to throw out leaves and roots from the energy stored in the stem. I just hope it can survive the transition into soil. :)

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the smaller rootmass than expected, and the smell of the pottingmix tells you, the soil was toxic to the plant.

it's very important with salvia divinorum, to strike a healthy cutting and to do everything the way she likes it, than to hope an unhappy plant will, jump fast back into full virgor, after rectifying the problem.

if a struggling plant, suddenly recieves perfect conditions and care, she will start to look better after a while but, it's not the same as, if you raised a small plant into adult hood without many dramas in between.

one of those dramas is that, divinorum branches often break off in the wind, or get twisted, thats alright if they get used for new cutting material (thats how it probagates itselfe in the wild) but not good if you want a steady tall plant. in other words, if a side branch had been formed by sally, the plant often grows them with a very weak joint to the main stem. this is good for self layering of the plant in the wild, but not good for growing big sally.

it's not uncommon with this plant that after a while a newer cutting can outgrows the motherplant it came from with ease. try to grow plant which avoid those "weak joints" in there architecture, sally growers would know exactly what i mean.

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the smaller rootmass than expected, and the smell of the pottingmix tells you, the soil was toxic to the plant.

 

What do you mean by the soil being "toxic"?

In my experience, when the soil has smelt bad and I have found less roots than I expected, it has been because the soil was not free draining enough and the roots had started rotting.

it's not uncommon with this plant that after a while a newer cutting can outgrows the motherplant it came from with ease. try to grow plant which avoid those "weak joints" in there architecture, sally growers would know exactly what i mean.

 

True dat ^^^

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What do you mean by the soil being "toxic"?

In my experience, when the soil has smelt bad and I have found less roots than I expected, it has been because the soil was not free draining enough and the roots had started rotting.

 

yeah, maybe not good wording.

if the roots would have been rotting off, than the soil would have been genuinly toxic to some degree.

often plants avoid the parts of the potting mix which have low drainage, are soggy, or even smelly. i thought from the plants part of view, every potting mix or soil which limits the virgor of the plant, could be just genericly be named toxic.

even a water horizont in the pot can seriously effect the root development of many plants.

in that case, just the physics of the soil become, a problem for the plant/roots.

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Soil with a bad smell like that would be anaerobic, meaning the roots would be without oxygen and hence would die. Having a good soil matrix with enough spaces for air to exist between soil particles is important for plant health. Waterlogged and compacted soils effectively remove those spaces between the soil particles, which in turn removes oxygen from the soil.

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SWIM has excellent results with this girl in a 2foot fish tank with mylar foil wrapped round it, (and in the bottom facing up).....good rich fertilizer mixed 50/50 with perlite.....daily mistings...fortnightly waterings and miracle grow mistings.....bit of spangnum in each pot when first planting (try using spagnum to lower PH, not to mention acts as buffer against excess nutrients) Peat/Spagnum is perfect source of rotting material for fungas gnat larvae to breed in

so SWIM recommends regular checks for fungus Gnats. First detection of these, 1 inch of coarse sand should be laid in all pots (SWIM also recomends 1 inch soil in the bottom of each pot too so they cant get in the bottom)

SWIM uses 2 x 26 watt growlux 2foot lights directly on top of tank at a 24/0 cycle which works wonders (but will also help down the track when switched to 8on/16off to induce flowering). 2 x PC fans are ran at each corner of the covered tank once weekly to flush air in there (they actually love high humid, low temps)

In the wild SD only spreads through branches which wilt and drop onto the ground and produce airiel roots. SWIM piches the tops of each cut out when there are 3+ nodes on main stem(before this can happen), so yours is ready to take a cutting.

TEK: at least two nodes in size, 4 leafs, cut bottom 2 leaves in half to reduce respiration, cut just above node, throw in 1 1'2 inches of water (tap will work fine) into a maccas large sundae cup and place lid on top. Store in dark cool place changing water every 2-3 days....within 3-12 days will have roots and ready for planting)

NOTE: IF this tek is used one would have to ensure ample hardening off, if planting outdoors and not in a controlled envoronment, as this is one of the most fickle plants when it comes to environment changes. Almost always bounces back, just doesnt like been moved around.

SWIM thinks that this is one that is hard to kill.....hard to grow :D

TIP: The more light you give them, the more often the will have to be misted to stop associated wilting. When swim upgraded from one to two lights, misting had to go from once every 3 days to once daily.... (SWIM does miss the occasional day, and might find the odd browning leaf as a result)

Edited by 2Deep2Handle

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are you saying, the person you know, etiolates the whole cutting for up to 14 day's?

etiolation often does improof rootformation, but i would be concerned that, that the plant suffers from being without any light fo so long.

aswell it's said that, sriking them into good friable soil or rockwool gives much better results than, striking the cutting in plain water.

nice input, i'v never heard of etiolating this particular plant to such a high degree.

for other plants than sally, i have used darkness as a rooting aid, but again never 100%

darness, i'm intrigued.

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IME:

They only require misting if you baby them. I used to mist daily, kept them in humidity chambers etc.

Then I gradually stopped misting all my Sallys and started acclimatizing them to living outside humidity chambers. I've found they are much happier this way with much bigger leaves, faster and less leggier growth.

Edit: also I think the airflow from being out of the humidity chamber = fatter/sturdier stems.

They grow in whatever amount of sunlight, as long as they are watered adequately and not thrown from shade to blazing sun

The girls in the greenhouse (in the ground) get heats from 10c - 35c. On hotter days they will droop but perk up right away when watered, I imagine that if I sprayed the leaves with water they would get burnt.

I find the humidity chambers great for rooting Sallys in. I take a cutting, usually 10cm tall with say 2 - 3 nodes below the tip.

Remove all the big leaves leaving only the growing tip. The stems are then dipped in rooting hormone if any is around, they root without it pretty easily.

Then they are put in their future pots, in a damp medium consisting of rich (richer the better) soil and about 30 - 40% vermiculite/perlite for drainage.

The pots with the cuttings go into a humidity chamber not in direct sun. They take longer to root if the humidity chamber is too hot, my rooting chamber is usually 10c - 15c.

They root much quicker this way than in a glass of water. They are rooted and ready to acclimatize in about a week.

Different strokes..

Edited by centipede

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