Kitchen Garden Forum

Some of my Genii fuchsia plants in the garden have started to shrivel and look half dead. I've looked at various learned tomes and can find nothing about it at all. It's not fuchsia rust, as the leaves (before they curled up and died) were healthy looking. No aphids or other beasties to be seen. Other plants around them (foxgloves) are fine - so it's not dryness at the roots. They look like they've been blowtorched! It's happening in different parts of the garden - other fuchsias around and about them are fine. In one area, I've planted a low hedge of them...and the end plant (which was about 6foot high (thus ruling out cat fouling) started shrivelling from the top downwards...and it's now breaking out at various points along the fuchsia hedge. When I break off the branches, the inside is green and healthy looking.

Any ideas much appreciated, please.

I grow a kind couple of fuschias but onviously thst,s not enough to make me an expert. I wonder if some kind of beetle or weevil is having a go at the roots which is causing the leaves to die back. I don,t know whether a very dilute solution something like Jeyes Fluid would stop whatever is happening. If the rest of the plant is healthy, maybe pruning back the healthyngrowth would prevent anyn creature feasting on the rest of it and aeakening the whole plant. .

Are you sure it's not dryness at the roots, Diane? I grow quite a few fuchsias, mostly in pots but also two hardy ones (Lady Thumb and Hawkshead) and this year, because of the long dry spells, they have all needed copious watering.