sammus
Full Member
Posts: 34
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 5:10 pm
Location: England

Apple seedling - browning / drooping leaves

Hey,

I have recently begun to grow an apply tree from seed. It has been going surprisingly well until about two weeks ago now when I came home from a weekend away to find several of the leaves had wilted.

Before the weekend, there were six healthy leaves holding themselves up well and perfectly green throughout, with the shoot about two inches in height. (See the first picture below) When I returned, most of the leaves had wilted and gone a brown colour. The shoot had been in the window so I believe it had perhaps got too hot, and the soil too dry causing this problem.

Since then, I have transplanted the shoot into a larger pot, made sure the soil is nice and moist (but not over watered) and that it is in a cooler place but still receives plenty of sunlight throughout the day. It has the two initial leaves that are at the base of the shoot (though I have noticed one has a brown tip?!) and one leaf fully opened at the top, with a new leaf starting to grow (see second picture below).

My problem is however, that it is still producing new shoots from the top of the shoot every four or five days or so, but then the leaf that is fully open then suddenly turns brown and withers within a matter of hours.

I'm not sure what is the problem - whether it is slowly dieing or whether my apple shoot can yet be saved. If anyone has any advice that would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks,

Sammus.

Pre-weekend shoot:
[img]https://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn296/bleblo1/DSC00789.jpg[/img]

Present day shoot:
[img]https://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn296/bleblo1/DSC00796.jpg[/img]

User avatar
webmaster
Site Admin
Posts: 9476
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

Anyone knows what causes this?

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Oh! The OP IS FROM 2010. I remembered this member, and there is a continuing saga that had been posted April 24 -->

:arrow: Subject: Growing apple trees from seed
sammus wrote:Hi everyone,

Over the last few months I tried to grow an apple tree from seed. It reached about 3" in height before getting sun burnt and eventually died before the Easter period.

Realising the looming fate of the shoot however, I set about germinating several more seeds

{...etc.}

...so I think the seedling in the OP must have died. But I would say the most likely problem was that the original container which the failing seedling had been uppotted from must have been too small and it had dried out or suffered root damage. Tree seedling is not as resilient as vegetables, etc. about getting dried out. I think the peat pot that was used to uppot was probably not deep enough for tree seedling either.

JONA
Greener Thumb
Posts: 812
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:11 am
Location: Sussex. England

So agree Star.
Young seedling trees can suffer very badly with 'transfer shock'.
Once the balance between the top of the tree and its root system has been disturbed it can take ages for the plant to recover... if ever!



Return to “Apple Topics”