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View Full Version : cause of burnt emerging leaves in DC?


venturabananas
08-19-2010, 02:18 PM
My dwarf cavendish is growing as fast or faster than all my other bananas, putting out at least one new leaf a week, but these leaves are quite pale when first emerging and are getting burnt on the side exposed to the sun. This is when the emerging leaf is still tightly coiled. And the new leaves are having trouble unfurling -- I've had to physically unfurl them myself. None of my nine other bananas are doing this. And I've treated them all the same as the DC.

This strange behavior only started after I fertilized all my plants with composted chicken manure (which I've done once monthly). It almost seems like the plant is just growing faster than the chlorophyll in the leaves can develop and so the pale exposed parts of new leaves burn.

Has anyone experienced this before?

I'll post a picture later to help you all envision what I'm trying to describe.

Thanks,
Mark

LilRaverBoi
08-19-2010, 02:39 PM
Possibly over-fertilized or under-watered. You should be careful with animal manure as a fertilizer, especially if the plant is small. If it isn't composted long enough or applied in too copious of quantities, it can cause burning of the leaves. Maybe that's not the issue, but that's my best guess.

hammer
08-19-2010, 02:50 PM
MIne done that last year. and i watered the He!! out of them and it helped.

venturabananas
08-19-2010, 05:00 PM
Thanks for the replies. I was pretty sure that the failure to unfurl had to do with overfertilizing -- though I had fertilized that plant with the exact same composted chicken manure (EB Stone) before, about the same amount, without any problems. It is the light pigmentation (only a light yellow-green color) and burning that I was most surprised by.

It seems to get plenty of water -- at least all my other bananas (and this one previously) seem happy with the amount of water they are getting. But I just doused it with a bunch more water, figuring it might leach out some of the fertilizer.

venturabananas
08-20-2010, 09:42 PM
Here are a couple of photos that show the burned leaves. You can the burns streaks on the older emerged leaves and on the newly, still wrapped, emerging leaf.http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=35878&size=1
http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=35879&size=1