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Originally Posted by enoki79
i'm in northern California.
actually i was trying to say that i was NOT successful at raking the root at all and it's all balled up really tight. repotting involved moving the entire ball and putting soil around it more or less.
will check soil to see if it's too wet.
will definitely look into the lime, acid soil, and light but it's very stormy and cold up here at the moment. how many hours of sunlight should i strive for? it's 50 degrees here right now and i'm shivering at my desk. is there any way to keep the plant a little warmer? i'm confounded because my neighbor has an azalea that bloomed this past year on his/her windowsill and i can see it is healthy and green. maybe i will ask him/her about it.
some books in the past told me to prune. someone told me that pruning 'shocked' my plant too much. at this point i don't want to hurt my tree ever again, since it seems to have gone downhill ever since the pruning 2 years ago. +(
thank you to everyone, please keep it coming!
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Don't feel guilty about "abusing" your azalea by pruning it two years ago. I have found that azaleas are very responsive to pruning by pushing out new leaves quite easily. I think it may be more likely that there is just not enough humidity for your azalea. One way to figure some problems out is to look at where in the garden a given plant does well and then try to emulate those conditions. They do like evenly moist and cool roots and while not flowering abundantly in shady areas of the garden, they will have foliage in abundance. If it were my azalea, I would water it with a half teaspoon of epsom salts in a litre of water, and then after the pot is
thoroughly drained, I would tuck it into a large plastic bag, seal the bag up at the opening, but only so that it doesn't slide down around the pot. Then I would put a couple of slashes in the bag, so that you don't get excessive humidity in there which would cause rotting leaves ultimately. Then set the plant into an area where it gets as much light as possible and wait til spring. Of course you'll have to monitor the watering even while in this hospital bag.
I should mention that when the time comes to remove plants from a bag environment like this, it is imperative that it be a gradual change, so you should add a slash to the bag every couple days til the plant is basically exposed to the drier outside air. To just unbag it would cause the foliage to dry up totally in a day. So remember, gradually.
When the weather warms up, set the plant outside and let it continue its recovery. As far as leaving it outside through the winter, since you are in Northern California, that may be quite possible, but I would check with a local nursery to find out what the possibilities are for that kind of plant in your area. That is what I would do if it were mine.