Fuchsia Gartenmeister Care Question

13 years ago

I posted this on the Fuchsia forum and it has been up there with no response for a while so I thought I would try here.

I planted a Gartenmeister in late May. The plant had a couple of dead leaves at the bottom - once I planted some more leaves started dying at the bottom. I thought that plant was possibly dying but then that stopped and the plant looked lush and green all summer with lots of flowers.

In late Sep I was away on vacation in Europe. When I returned the plant had a slightly "roasted" look and a lot of the flowers had fallen off. People here said that there had been a few days with the temps around 110 deg while I was away.

Anyway the plant looked like that ever since. Does not seem to have any new growth and still has flowers although I think where the flowers fell off there are some limp looking stems where the flowers were formed.

Do these plants stop growing in winter. I'm in San Diego where we don't have much of a winter. Does it need fertilizer, pruning, more water? I have not fertilized it since planting. It is planted a bed made of planting mix and I did add some EB Stone Organics Sure Start at the time of planting.

Any tips would be welcome. Photo of the plant below.

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Comments (5)

chadinlg Zone 9b Los Gatos CA
13 years ago
I'm used to seeing this fuchsia with leaves which are more bronzed - purple than this, perhaps this indicates more sun than optimum... Fuchsia's do resent freezing cold or extreme heat and will stop growing then...I think Gartenmeister is more sensitive than most to cold - I have lost it before in Zone 9.
goldenginkgo
13 years ago
It actually doesn't look too bad for this time of year. Be careful not to overwater during the winter. It will probably remain in this condition through the winter and put out new growth when the weather stays consistently warm towards late winter. Just as a gude the irrigation during the winter months could be as little as none to once every two weeks.
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blue_can
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks for the feedback. I'm quite careful with watering. It is on an irrigration system but I check the moisture in the soil with a soil tester from time to time and adjust the watering accordingly.

What I did not mention in my original post is that quite a few of the leaves went brown and fell off recently. So it is possible it has also got a bit burnt. In the summer it is protected to some extent by a giant birds of paradise above it. I did not realize that the trajectory of the sun changes to a point where in the winter there is a lot more direct sunlight and it can get hot here even in the winter (it was in the 80s a few days ago).

Hopefully it will gow back more leaves in the spring.
hoovb zone 9 sunset 23
13 years ago
Yes it looks great for December. It will start growing and looking good again in early-mid April. Give it some fertilizer then and it will really take off.
blue_can
Original Author
13 years ago
Okay thanks. Having not grown it before I was not sure what to expect. For that matter apart from a Kangaroo paw this is the first year I've really done any sort of gardening but all of my other plants I planted are looking much better than the Fuchsia (apart from the Pomegrante which has just started shedding leaves for the winter) so I was concerned there might be something wrong with it.

Could be my imagination but we've had a few days of light rain and I think it now looks a bit better