What's wrong with this Caapi?

[Scarecrow]

Some strange stuff going on here, never seen anything like it. It doesn't look like a healthy thing... anybody have any ideas what might be going wrong here?

http://imgur.com/a/JMcEC

[gerbil]

What you are looking at there is more than likely a Phosphorous 'deficiency' that is caused by cold soil temperatures, which is what is starting to occur in Melbourne at the moment.

[zelly]

a Phosphorous 'deficiency' that is caused by cold soil temperatures

fwiw, I've several caapi plants planted in the ground that stay green pretty much year round, summer temps of around 35-38C, winter temps around -1 to -3C. My biggest issue is not giving them enough water though as i tend to let them fend for themselves, so they shed a lot of leaves in the summer months.

[gerbil]

A valid point and good information, though given the context it's a relatively arbitrary statement.

There is a fair difference having an established root system in the ground in an organic amended clay, compared to a leaching 20L pot with pine bark potting mix sitting on a lawn coming into winter.

I can only assume your soil practices from little snippets i've picked up over the years, but i'm waiting on a took the bait answer where you planted the caapi in a compacted corner of non-amended clay where it gets wet and cold where phosphate issues theoretically should show up but don't, so i'm just cheekily getting in first.

Min max is one thing, local environmental conditions, how abrupt or erratic is season change, what's the plants nutritional tissue health going into change, whats the potting mix / soil properties and nutrition etc. is a broader context to consider.

It could be viral, you get similar looking things in grapes called leafroll that looks like a P, K or Mg problem. No idea if leafroll or similar impacts plants outside of Grapes, but even then it doesn't look right and is a long shot working in that area.

Mg to me doesn't fit too well given the very even parallel nature of the pigmentation or necrosis (think it's just all pigmentation at this stage?)

Scarecrow, the more information you can give about anything he better, pot sizes, soils mixes, feeding regimes, history of plant health, location etc. Plant diagnosis can be ridiculously hard and even then it can be ballpark theories that fix problems, it's best to eliminate variables before considering an area of possibilities.

Deficiency, Toxicity and Availability can all interact making diagnosis difficult and solutions often not as straight forward as we'd like. it is a very complex field.

You can get a deficiency of one element due to an excess of another, or simply a deficiency due to lack of presence. pH can increase or decrease availability, creating potential deficiency or toxicity.

Sky's the limit and humans will never master a dynamic system, we just attempt to make it logically functional for ourselves, just like taxonomy, doesn't mean shit but is handy.

Either way, as an experiment or an irrational practice, i'd be getting some sort of insulation below and around the pot making sure not to restrict drainage, attempt to increase and stabilise soil temperature, below is more important than above so prioritise but don't limit.

What do you think it is Zelly?

[zelly]

What do you think it is Zelly?

hey I'm as clueless as the day is long, not to mention borderline dementia / alzheimer's setting in. I was just having a hard time grasping a relationship between soil temperatures and phosphorous deficiency.

I had something very similar looking in a large potted kratrom. Eventually the leaves fell off, the next year new ones appeared, problem solved.

I think container grown anything is always going to exhibit more 'issues' than the same plant grown in mother earth, where it seems they've managed to do just fine for eons with little or no human intervention.

whatever it is, seems to be affecting older growth leaves & not so much newer growth leaves?

[LokStok]

looks like braille, or perhaps binary code to me.

she's obviously trying to communicate with you

[Scarecrow]

A valid point and good information, though given the context it's a relatively arbitrary statement.

There is a fair difference having an established root system in the ground in an organic amended clay, compared to a leaching 20L pot with pine bark potting mix sitting on a lawn coming into winter.

I can only assume your soil practices from little snippets i've picked up over the years, but i'm waiting on a took the bait answer where you planted the caapi in a compacted corner of non-amended clay where it gets wet and cold where phosphate issues theoretically should show up but don't, so i'm just cheekily getting in first.

Min max is one thing, local environmental conditions, how abrupt or erratic is season change, what's the plants nutritional tissue health going into change, whats the potting mix / soil properties and nutrition etc. is a broader context to consider.

It could be viral, you get similar looking things in grapes called leafroll that looks like a P, K or Mg problem. No idea if leafroll or similar impacts plants outside of Grapes, but even then it doesn't look right and is a long shot working in that area.

Mg to me doesn't fit too well given the very even parallel nature of the pigmentation or necrosis (think it's just all pigmentation at this stage?)

Scarecrow, the more information you can give about anything he better, pot sizes, soils mixes, feeding regimes, history of plant health, location etc. Plant diagnosis can be ridiculously hard and even then it can be ballpark theories that fix problems, it's best to eliminate variables before considering an area of possibilities.

Deficiency, Toxicity and Availability can all interact making diagnosis difficult and solutions often not as straight forward as we'd like. it is a very complex field.

You can get a deficiency of one element due to an excess of another, or simply a deficiency due to lack of presence. pH can increase or decrease availability, creating potential deficiency or toxicity.

Sky's the limit and humans will never master a dynamic system, we just attempt to make it logically functional for ourselves, just like taxonomy, doesn't mean shit but is handy.

Either way, as an experiment or an irrational practice, i'd be getting some sort of insulation below and around the pot making sure not to restrict drainage, attempt to increase and stabilise soil temperature, below is more important than above so prioritise but don't limit.

What do you think it is Zelly?

Hmmm... frankly I'm not too well-versed in the details here (I'm a complete beginner as far as gardening goes) but I'll give you what information I can.

The plant has been in the pot that it's in basically since I got the plant. I have no idea exactly what the capacity of the pot is (and the label has long since rubbed off), but it measures up to be about 33cm diameter by 20 cm vertically. If I remember right, the soil mix was basically a combination of some stock potting mix and the chicken-fertilized dirt from my veggie patch, with a top layer of hay.

The plant was until recently confined to (and busting out of) a big garbage bag humidity tent. It was reasonably healthy but when it was outgrowing its tent some of the leaves got burnt. I have got the impression that its leaves have always been a bit pale, though. Just a few weeks ago I got hold of a proper greenhouse and it's been growing pretty wildly since. The greenhouse is typically warm and humid, regardless of the weather, but I don't have any measurements.

Feeding regime is nonexistant; until recently the plant has not been properly fertilized apart from adding more top layer hay and chicken poop, which seems to have been adequate. A week or so after I moved the plant into the greenhouse, a friend of mine brought over some liquid fertilizer (a blend of canna terra vega and flora), so we gave the plant a half dose of it.

As for pH, I think my dad's got a testing kit kicking around somewhere, but I don't know where to look. I'll have to wait until I see him then ask, but he's on holidays at the moment.

Any suggestions on how to actually go about insulating it? I could stick a slab of wood under the pot and that might do the trick for coldness from below, but I don't really know what to do about insulating it from the sides.

 

hey I'm as clueless as the day is long, not to mention borderline dementia / alzheimer's setting in. I was just having a hard time grasping a relationship between soil temperatures and phosphorous deficiency.

I had something very similar looking in a large potted kratrom. Eventually the leaves fell off, the next year new ones appeared, problem solved.

I think container grown anything is always going to exhibit more 'issues' than the same plant grown in mother earth, where it seems they've managed to do just fine for eons with little or no human intervention.

whatever it is, seems to be affecting older growth leaves & not so much newer growth leaves?

It seems to affect leaves at random. Some of the leaves are older, some are newer, some are lower, some are higher. I haven't been able to pick a pattern.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Scarecrow

[gerbil]

Yeah I don't know about all that Zelly, from what I hear you've got lots to teach and us a lot to learn, besides the days are getting shorter here ;) I'm majorly keen to read more in depth about your old school soil improvement techniques, germination, seed and potting mixes, container sizes etc. but understand the nature of these skills and our society, You should write a book.

I hazard corrective suggestions of what to do with other peoples plants primarily 'cause i'm not positive in what i'm talking about and the internet is restrictive. I'm more than happy to get in tune with and or experiment and kill one of my own plants.

With insulation, just get creative, small things make big differences, get naked and go outside in winter, sit on the bricks, sit on the lawn and sit on a lump of wood, see which one you'd prefer to be on for an extended period.

Simple things like a bubble wrap tree guard allows the early planting of annual summer vegetables. A species may be in a specific spot sitting on bricks during winter and it dies, same species same spot sitting in a styrofoam box, on bricks, sprouts in spring.

If you can restrict a major fluctuation, or simply stop a decrease, it possibly could be the difference between life and death, growth or dormancy, deficiency/toxicity or stability.

Get as many opinions on it as you can Scarecrow, if you are interested it's probably worth taking it to a couple of quality nurseries. If you find out the root cause and apply the solution, you will progress immensely as a grower, that can't be underestimated or overstated. None of this modern gardening hardware store 'throw this at it' flying blind bullshit, we need to educate ourselves.

At the end of the day, we accept that we are sweeping back the ocean with a broom, in potted culture as zelly succinctly stated, and in taking more or less equatorial rainforest species and giving it a view of Antarctica.