Another angle. The brown leaves seem to be at the same level all around the shrub.

drought??

transplant???

any more facts than just some brown leaves???

is that whole bed amended with perlite??

ken

The white on the ground is paint from the fence that was just power washed. I'm not sure if the bush started turning brown before or after the power washing. We are power washing only with water, no chemicals.

This is the second or third summer for the bush and I think we've had enough rain. I'm wondering if I should just wait it out and see what happens or if I should cut it back.

Also, the bottom branches don't seem to be so upright anymore, they seem to be falling more toward the ground.

This post was edited by NatalieW on Sat, Aug 31, 13 at 9:02

i would prune out dead stuff ... NEXT SPRING... after i confirm its dead stuff ...

tomorrow or so.. is officially sept.. i call that fall in the Northern hemisphere ... you dont tell us where you are .... but if some of the leaves are 'turning' early.. so what????

this thing will be about twice as big in all dimensions... next year ... you might be having to run it over with a truck.. to keep it manageable... but not because of a few brown leaves...

i bet it was fence related ...

kedn

Lol. I am in NY in the Hudson Valley area. I wasn't sure if it was just turning early or something wrong with it. I love this bush. A friend of mine has one as a foundation planting in front of her house and it has to be a least 7 years old. She has managed to keep it a manageable size. Ill have to ask her what she does to it. She was going to give me an off shoot of hers. We had the landscaper here doing some plantings in that bed and I came home and he had put one for me.

The fence will have to be replaced in the next couple years. Maybe I'll build the fence to accommodate the bush.

Ok so I'll wait and see what happens to this. Thanks so much.

You know all it looks like to me is fall on its way...if you knocked those dry leaves off I think that your plant would look fine. The branches are bowing a bit to their weight, which is why they are not as erect as they were. Deciduous plants monitor photoperiod (day length, actually night length) but temperature, moisture, etc can affect timing. The majority of the shrub looks great. I wouldn't worry.

Sara

ps you can prune this shrub in all kinds of ways, generally best to do in spring. You can coppice it each year and keep it fairly 'small' or you can prune into a multi-trunked small tree. It wants to be a good-sized plant so keep that in mind. It is hard to propagate them from cuttings but you can 'layer' it - rough up the bottom of a branch a bit and pin it to the ground, using a bit of rooting hormone if possible. Google 'plant propagation by layering'.

These plants are sensative to too much moisture and soils that don't drain properly.

You can cut it back to nubs practically in late winter and you should get a more compact plant. If you get wild gangly growth, then cut those back to an outward facing leaf in mid to late June.

I am also thinking maybe too much water. I have one in a bed with a newly planted Rose of Sharon so I was out there watering that bed quite often. Within a week, I started getting brown leaves on the smokebush. Stopped watering the smokebush and the leaves stopped happening. I didn't even think it was getting that much but evidently more than it wanted and I garden in largely sand. This happened a about three weeks ago.