Help! Basically the SAME thing that happened to my boxwood is happening to my ilex!
It's getting crispy new growth that wasn't so crispy before, but looked rather healthy for a long time after the growth popped up. The leaves that fall stay fully green in their crispy state. I can easily blame this on my parents, who I had water it once in the four days I was gone last week. And that's perhaps the only thing in common with the boxwood, which they gave me for Christmas. Thing is, my dad does the watering and he ALWAYS uses a jug of tap water that he leaves standing and open for at least a week before he uses it, supposedly to let the chlorine evaporate out of it. Sometimes he adds a bit of Miracle Gro to it for the house plants. Even I've used this jug of water for the longest time, but I use bottled water when he adds Miracle Gro to the jug.
Not like he'd know anything... he can just keep plants ALIVE... but anyways, is it possible that overfeeding can do such a thing to tree like this? I say overfeeding because I already have a few Osmocote pellets sitting in the pot, ready to do their job (about half of the SMALL end of the scoop's worth... that came with the container... meh).
It also sat in the window the WHOLE time I was away. I normally move it from the window at night for privacy reasons. It's done absolutely well having been treated like that for months on end (and once it stays consistently warm, I shall move it outside as the temps still drop pretty low this day in age, oddly enough). Anyways, could this have had a hand in the new growth going crispy? I heard of unusual cold making true tropical plants (I know my ilex isn't tropical, but it needs plenty of shelter in my neck of the woods come wintertime) wilt and go yellow, but not this.
I know now with more experience that this tree has very little potential as it is, but it's been the tree with the least dead growth/plain death out of 3 trees I've had in my latest foray into bonsai. It would be sad for me to have it even partially croak. :O