for once I am grateful for the slope in my yard, but I am afraid to go and see how my Artemisia are doing. my lavender seems to like the rain. weird.

pat, I hope your plant recovers.

I am simply amazed at the benefits of a good thick layer of wood mulch. My orchard and veggie garden are mulched pretty good and I can walk through it without sinking or getting muddy. If I walk out in the yard I sink. Amazing how the wood just soaks up the water.

I had not heard of cotton root rot. Could that be what the white patches are that I saw on the trunk when I was pulling back the excess soil? The problem here is that the whole yard was ripped out last summer (for a new house) and truckload after load of new "soil" came in, from 2 different suppliers. I have no idea at all what might be in it, or not. All my labor has gone into correcting an area that was doomed to severe flooding when the builders left. I did get that done, but the actual soil for all the rest is a big question mark until I can get it tested. The althea sits right on the edge of that area, and that's why it got soil piled up around the base. I'm also concerned that I found June bugs that had tunneled under, and some new grubs were already there.

Mike, While it is wonderful to have that layer of mulch on the soil, it can work against the soil---holding in moisture when we'd rather have the soil drying up. I have raked back the mulch from around the onions (and they were only lightly mulched to begin with since we've been really wet dating back to before I even planted the onions) in an effort to get their soil to dry out more quickly, but have left it elsewhere.

Pat, Cotton Root Rot is just about the only disease I'm familiar with that affects althea and related plants. Other than CRR, they generally don't have a lot of issues. The problem is that it is almost always deadly, and if you have the same plant all in a row----like a row of Rose of Sharon bushes for example---it often moves right up the row killing first one, and then the next one, and then the next one, until it gets them all. In alkaline soil with a pH between about 7 and 8.5, it is a huge and almost always deadly problem. The main way to combat it is to amend the soil heavily to get the soil pH below 7.0 and to keep it there. I aim for 6.8 but we have alkaline water, so it is hard to keep it at that pH once I get it there. I just mentioned it so you'd know the disease exists and that it is deadly for Rose of Sharon, so when a ROS is sickly looking, CRR is always a possibility that you have to consider. I am pretty familiar with Cotton Root Rot because it is a perpetual problem in parts of Texas where cotton once was grown, and I grew up in an area like that in Texas. However, even if cotton never, ever was grown in your soil, CRR can exist because it effects at least 2,000 species of plants.

I'll find and link some info on CRR below.

I am more inclined to think your Rose of Sharon is suffering from all the excess moisture we've been having in this part of the country, but if it declines and dies, I don't know if I'd go back into that same exact spot with another Rose of Sharon without first amending the soil to try to prevent the disease from getting the replacement plant, just in case what you're seeing is Cotton Root Rot.

For June Bugs and their grubs, you can treat the soil to reduce their numbers. I used Milky Spore either our first or second summer here and never have lost a plant to them, though we often have plenty of them around. The timing of applying the milky spore powder is important---I think that I had to apply it in either late July or early August in order for it to work well.

Once you get a soil test done, you'll have some idea of what might be going on with your soil at least in terms of fertility and soil pH. I expect everyone will have plants struggling in some parts of their yards or gardens after the May Deluge.

Thanks. I know I have to have another soil analysis done, to find out what is here now that so much soil has been brought in. I'm basically starting over with it, since they scraped a huge area right down to the hardpan and then filled it with trucked-in stuff.
Maybe I can try a fast soil amendment for Ph under that althea? I didn't know they liked a slightly acid soil. That should be fairly easy. I've salvaged a few sad azaleas with a quick correction. But the water, as you said, is a very big issue. Some of my stuff has simply drowned from lack of aeration.

You could try to do a fast pH fix if your soil is alkaline to begin with, but it might not be. Some parts of OK have alkaline soil and some have acidic soil, and probably someone in this state there is perfectly neutral soil. That's what you need the test to tell you. Because I grew up only about 80 miles from where I now live and had strongly alkaline soil and water there, I expected to have alkaline soil and water here too, so it didn't come as a shock to me when Cotton Root Rot reared its ugly head almost immediately after we moved here. I about half-way expected it because the land we bought was fallow farm land where cotton was one of the crops they grew, according to neighbors who were helping me diagnose the CRR in the first place.

With trucked-in soil, there's no telling what you have and I imagine it will take some amending to get it into good shape, although you might luck out and only need to add organic matter since trucked-in soil tends to be crappy topsoil that is low in organic matter.

Based on how much rain has fallen, I expect the Rose of Sharon is only suffering from being too wet since it really needs pretty well-drained soil anyhow. If I had a plant that size and was determined to save it, I'd probably dig it up and plant it in a container the size of a whiskey half-barrel. I'd put it in a great soil-less mix that drains well, and pay careful attention to watering in the heat of the summer. Of course, you'd have to prune it back hard if digging it up in June because a lot of root damage likely would occur with the digging, but once you had it in the container, you could keep it there until fall. That would give you time to get the soil tested and to amend the soil in that area, if needed (and probably it is needed to at least improve the drainage) and then replant in fall when the weather is mild. Or, you can take your chances it will survive and just leave it where it is, and try to help it by feeding it something acidic like Miracid or by using an organic azalea fertilizer. It could be that all it needs is sunshine, warmth and drier soil and the weather may provide all three this week.