Chlorosis! How to Treat Yellowing Foliage // Garden Answer

hey guys today I want to talk about chlorosis because it's something that I'm dealing with in my garden right now I'm not sure how big of an issue it is in other gardening regions uh but it is in mine so I thought I would explain what it is and how we combat it so um chlorosis is the yellowing of leaf tissue due to lack of chlorophyll and it usually presents just like this the tissue is all yellow and the veins remain a dark green so when you see that it's a Telltale sign that your plant has closis the main reason why plants get chosis is because of a lack of iron your plants need iron in order to form chlorophyll which is the green pigment in your leaves and that chlorophyll also helps absorb sunlight which then turns into sugar which is energy for your plant to grow and be healthy so there's several things that can play into why your plants aren't getting enough iron and the biggest one is soil PH if the soil pH is too high your soil's too alkaline it binds up the nutrients in the soil and makes them insoluble and it makes the plants not be able to take them up into their system that's what I deal with in my area so I have to combat uh chlorosis with a two-pronged approach I have to continually add soil in into our soil to bring that PH down in order for the plant to even be able to take up iron and then I add in a good source of iron so there's always some of that present in the soil um so that the plants can take it up this is a brand new Garden for us so I'm dealing with a lot of just Little issues here and there and I hope throughout the years I can uh kind of reverse these problems the other things that can contribute are any kind of root problems so if the roots are damaged or hurt in any way they are unable to take up nutrients so if they're sitting in water or if they've just had some damage like a roota tiller or if they're compacted something like that so that your plants can't take it up that's also that also can contribute to a chlorotic problem now usually they start on the ends like you can see right here on this rose bush here they start on the ends or the younger terminal leaves and then they work their way down into the shrub so further down in the shrub looks nice and green but the tips all look bad and it may not be a universal U issue it might just present on a few branches and if it's a severe problem the leaves can start to Scorch and the branch could eventually even die so you really want to get on it and start treating your um shrubs with iron the moment you see this start so let me show you a few examples of some things in my garden that have chosis the first one is right next to me this is a rose bush here a hybrid tea and it's got chlorosis really bad so I'm going to be treating that and then let's go look at a hearty geranium I have so this prenal geranium has chlorosis or the beginnings of it you can start to see the uh tissue is yellowing and the veins are remaining dark green so I'll be treating this one as well and then I want to show you a little bit more in our privet Hedges so this is a perfect example of chlorosis you can see on the younger or terminal leaves that they're showing chlorosis the tissue is starting to yellow and the veins are dark green but as you follow the branch back into the shrub it's a nice dark green color so that is a really good example of chlorosis I wish I didn't have such a great example to show you so now I want to show you what I use and how I apply it so I'm starting with the Roses first and I'm going to be using iron tone it's something I've been using for a long time I really like that it's organic I like that it's a slow release slow breakdown it doesn't leech out of the the soil very quickly it stays present which is something I really like to know especially when I have such a chlorosis problem so I'm just going to follow the instructions on the back of the bag and it says to sprinkle one to two cups around the drip line of the plant which uh the drip line you go to the outermost edges of the leaves it's like if you were to draw a circle around those outermost edges that's the drip line of your plant so I'm just going to sprinkle that around and kind of work it in lightly with my fingers and then water it [Music] in so that's how I combat closis I do recommend though that everybody perform a soil test on your soil that way you know what PH you're dealing with as well as some of the key nutrients in your soil so you have a baseline you know what issues if there are any with your soil so you can add in what you need to for your plants to be happy and healthy so I hope this video was helpful to you guys if it was leave a like down below and we will see you in the next video bye [Music]