Help sick plants!

[Anonymous]

Okay I'll try again with another subject title! :)

I saw "Sunsatia Peach - Nemesia" at the nursery last week -- they look like little snap dragons. They were totally healthy and beautiful, chalk-full of flowers.

Now they're all dying!!

I put a few in the ground (with high quality potting soil) and the others I placed into larger pots with potting soil. Immediately they started to "fall" as if someone sat in the middle of them. Most also lost all their flowers, overnight!

I'm in So CA where temperature has been 75-82 or so. They have been in full sun, though I had some in partial shade and that didn't help either. I've tried watering more and watering less... and nothing helps.

Suggestions? Experiences? Comments? Thanks!

Reo

[Stu Pidasso]

Snap dragons suck, my friend. I can grow most things but can't, for the life of me, grow those damn things. They're finicky and too much bother in my opinion.....

[Anonymous]

:) They aren't real snap dragons though. They're some hybrid. I don't even know if they are related to snaps.

[Frogleg]

There are way too many reasons plants die. Or decline catastrophically. It sounds as if you've covered all the bases. The only possibilities that spring to *this* mind are some sort of disease that was present in the plants, and they were going to collapse for anyone under any conditions, OR the plants had just emerged from carefully-controlled, ideal nursery conditions and hadn't had time to 'harden off' and adjust to the Real World.

Ah hah! First hit when I searched on 'Nemesia'

"Plants are neither frost hardy nor tolerant of sudden heat and bright light so harden plants off carefully."

Don't give up. They may recover.

[David Hill]

Reo wrote "........ I saw "Sunsatia Peach - Nemesia" at the nursery last week -- they look like little snap dragons. They were totally healthy and beautiful, chalk-full of flowers.

Now they're all dying!! ........."

I would cut them back to 3 or 4 inches and hope that they will still have some life left in the roots. Sounds as if they were just to tender when you planted them out. if you try again then reduce the growth so that the roots have a chance to get established and to support the plants.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that suggestion. I'll do that!

Reo

[Anonymous]

That's it! It *is* exactly like they went into shock.

D'oh! (And btw I searched forever for info like this the other night and couldn't find anything about how to grow them!) But the sites I did find had conflicting info... and now this site you pointed me to says they're annuals! It didn't say that on the little tag that came with them... we got them b/c they said "provide color all year round" ... so now you're telling me these plants will die in less than a year, even if I can get them to recover??

:( ...for all eight months they'll live?

(Thanks for your help!)

Reo