rwright064
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moringa tree is not growing leaves

Hello,

I have a Moringa tree that we planted in a small indoor greenhouse last year and it survived with leaves until about a few weeks ago. We had a dip in temperature that caused the plant to lose its leaves and then it warmed up for a few days causing the tree to sprout new leaves. Right after that, the weather turned colder again and it lost all of its leaves. Now we are trying to get the tree to grow some leaves, but it has been a week at about 80 degrees F and no leaves are growing. It also has a bit of white residue on its stem in certain places
moringa.jpg
. Is there any way to get the plant to grow leaves again possibly by feeding it something through its roots? It is not very big at this point only about 1 foot. It seems that one of the stems (there are two of them) is starting to wither away from the top down. I have just repotted it with fresh sand loam.

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applestar
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I have a dwarf moringa I grew from seed.
I’ve had it for two winters indoors now, and I agree there is a bit of leaf loss especially when cold and/or low temp is experienced.

From all I’ve read, this is a very resilient tree, and it will come back with new growth once warm temperatures and growing conditions are back — put it where it was happiest last year/growing season. As long as the main trunk is alive and not shriveled or dried up, it will probably grow new side shoot(s) when conditions become favorable again. Don’t over stress it trying to get it back growing right away.

I had a bit of mite and scale insect problems about a month ago. Keep checking for sticky residue on the trunk and leaf stems, or surrounding the surface area around the pot. If you see ants crawling around or on it, that’s a sure sign of trouble.

White ness I think is just the bark aging and hardening.

Moringa grows compound leaflets and WILL drop the entire main leafstem which looks a bit like a branch. Don’t panick even if this turns into a single trunk.

Trim back that dried up tip and any others. You can encourage side shoots lower down the trunk by curving the trunk sideways but we can talk about that later once it starts to stir.

rwright064
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Here are successive pictures from the same tree a few days apart. It is watered, in plant fiber soil and I have fed it a little fertilizer. Heat in the enclosure is a balmy 85 degrees. Still no leaves, keep waiting then?
Moringa 2.jpg
Moringa 3.jpg

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applestar
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I’ll post latest pic of my sorry looking Dwarf Moringa later. Mine hasn’t broken out in new bud either, if that’s any consolation. Yours looks alive and well so you’ll just have to be patient.

Don’t know if this will help but here are a couple of pics from previous years. All those pinnately compound leaves fell off — nothing but sticks just like yours in spring :wink:

Image


Image

imafan26
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it seems strange to me that anyone would bother to grow moringa from seed or even keep it in a pot. It is such a common plant here and easily roots by jabbing a cutting in the ground. Many ethnic people eat the young pods, so they would not let it ripen on the tree. It is one of the benefits of a frost free climate. Those trees get quite large so they are not pot plants here.

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applestar
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Haha the more I hear stories like that, the less I stress over this plant. :wink:

I’ll try propagating a 2nd one. :-()

rwright064
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Here is the tree now. Still no leaves. Temp around 80 degrees. Keep waiting then? I would hate to have this tree die, especially since I had quite a bit of time to turn it around since I first asked about it.
tree.jpg
tree.jpg (75.22 KiB) Viewed 2221 times

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applestar
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A little bit concerning that the trunk looks reddish/brownish rather than olive-grey. Is it getting good light?

Maybe try loosely tenting with produce bag supported with bamboo skewers or chopsticks?

rwright064
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applestar wrote:
Sat May 22, 2021 3:29 pm
A little bit concerning that the trunk looks reddish/brownish rather than olive-grey. Is it getting good light?

Maybe try loosely tenting with produce bag supported with bamboo skewers or chopsticks?
I have five plant and grow lights around the enclosure. Everything else seems to be growing fine. I am not sure what you mean by "tenting." It has a heating pad under it as well. Ever since it lost its leaves for the second time it has been withering from the top down, but I just waited and watered and trimmed just like everyone here said to do.

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applestar
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What are the other things growing in the same environment? That may provide additional clue — maybe it’s not same as what the Moringa prefers.

I think you should remove the heating pad. I think Moringa’s “winter” is no more than 60’s. If you have been keeping it moist, try withholding the water a bit — along with removing the heating pad. Not dry out completely but keep it drier than you have been “barely moist”

“tenting” — I meant try giving it extra humidity


…mine has been sent out on the Great Migration/Summer Vaca along with almost everybody else now that overnight temps seem to have settled mostly in the 50’s to 60’s and above. Mine had horrible scale insect infestation — more reason to send it out where the Garden Patrol predatory and parasitic beneficials are - for me, this has almost always helped, and they recover quicker than if I tried fiddling with sprays and remedies. I tried rubbing at the scales still clinging to the Moringa while I was watering and they rubbed right off so I went ahead and gave the branches a good rinse with the hose-end sprayer.
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…it really needs to be uppotted…
…it really needs to be uppotted…

rwright064
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applestar wrote:
Sat May 22, 2021 11:30 pm
What are the other things growing in the same environment?
I actually have three other moringa trees that are growing just fine on the same shelf. None of them have lost their leaves yet
trees.jpg

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applestar
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So are you, for example, watering exactly the same amount to the two pots, etc?

rwright064
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I am doing nothing different. Never have. The first tree just lost all its leaves and just sat there. The tree was growing with leaves then the temperature dropped and it lost all its leaves and then the temperature rose and stayed around 80 degrees but the tree never started sprouting any leaves at all, which is why I came to this forum to ask because to my eyes it was slowly dying. At that point I had time to turn it around if it was dying, but the response was to leave it be and keep doing what I was doing. So that is what I did.

imafan26
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Can you get more cuttings? Moringa will not tolerate cold but it usually roots very quickly at 80 degrees. I have never used cuttings so small. We usually take a fairly long branch like 5 ft long and an inch or more in diameter and just stick it in the ground and water it once a day. I have never tried to root anything that small.

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applestar
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It’s always a good idea to provide as much information as possible when asking for help diagnosing a problem. We can only make assumptions from what you tell us.

So @imafan has an interesting point — were these cuttings or did they already have roots? The three in this pot look very different from the ailing one in the other pot (from what I see in the photos). I’m a bit boggled by Imafan’s visual of a big branch stuck in the ground to root — but that means moringa roots well on “cuttings” that have mature, semi-woody or even woody bark.

If you want to give up, concentrate on the the other three. But there ARE other things to try still if you are up for it. — for example, if there are no growing points left on the leafless one, I wonder if it would help to try to stimulate growth nodes to form by making staggered shallow slits/cuts in the bark (Sharp, sterilized knife/scalpel) .... Maybe try the scratch test (again) first and see if there is green under the bark — it has to be alive for this to work.

I think if this was a well-rooted plant, there could be a better chance for additional growth from the base of the trunk where the cells differentiate between roots and aerial structure, so making slits there would force reorganization of the cells quicker than in upper parts of the trunk, OR apical hormonal influence may trigger better growth point development at the VERY top....

rwright064
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applestar wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 1:05 pm
It’s always a good idea to provide as much information as possible when asking for help diagnosing a problem. We can only make assumptions from what you tell us.

So @imafan has an interesting point — were these cuttings or did they already have roots?
They were all grown from seeds. The original one looked no different than the others until winter when the temperature dipped below 70. Once it started getting warm the leaves came back out as I mentioned previously, then we had a week where the temperature dropped again. It lost all its leaves for the second time and has been that way since I posted the first picture. Soon after it lost all its leaves the second time I purchased a heating pad and heat lamps and the temperature inside the greenhouse since then has never dropped below 80. That was right before I took the very first picture.

Just from my inexperienced eye it seems as if it started wilting and turning brown soon after the second time it lost its leaves. I believe someone said something about bark growing so I kept that in mind. The other trees are going fine; however, they have not lost their leaves yet either. They were planted after the problems with the first plant started this spring. The original looked like it was dying - at least to my eye- which is why I sought help from people more experienced. Everyone seemed confident that it was just adapting so I waited and watched as everyone said to do.

imafan26
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Actually a 5 ft moringa branch about 1-2 inches thick is probably still a semi ripe cutting. Moringa which is usually callled marunguray here grows extremely fast in the tropics. It will put out 8-10 ft branches in a few weeks. I have never really seen a marunguray tree in its natural form. It is is usually hacked back repeatedly as people harvest the leaves and fruit. I took these pictures in Waipahu today where there are a lot of trees. Waipahu is hot and relatively dry. Many of the trees are planted outside the yards along the main highway and are probably living mostly on rain. There was a tree with fruit on it but I could only take pictures where I could stop my car. It is not uncommon to see 4 or 6 trees planted outside the fences or in yards. The trees can get quite tall, but have non invasive roots so they don't spread very far. I have seen these trees up to 40 ft tall. In these older neighborhoods without HOA's yards are usually filled front and back with edible plants and fruiting trees. Mango, avocado, citrus, abiu, chico, breadfruit, carambola, papaya, lychee, sweet potato leaves (they do not make tubers, they are grown for their leaves only),and banana. Lychee and sakura trees are usually seen above 900 ft. Kaimana lychee will fruit at lower elevations. Mango trees grow best in hot and dry locations like Waipahu. Every once in a while someone will have some sugar cane or pineapple in their yard as well.

I did plant a moring once but I could not get it to stay short. It kept putting out 10-20 ft branches and it was grown from a 5 foot cutting stuck in the ground. It was actually hard to kill it since it keep sprouting from the trunk.
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moringa growing along main road
moringa growing along main road

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applestar
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Hmm... @imafan, so do you think it could be sensitive to overwatering/root rot? I’m thinking that might be why I uppotted in a clay pot from the black plastic, though I do often put long-lived edibles in clay.

@RWright — You might want to gently take the one that is not doing well out of its pot and check it’s roots. It would be a bummer if that one didn’t make it. I had two growing and lost one as I noted above, but I can’t recall why it died. Growing plants is almost always a series of ups and downs (you try to learn from the losses), and I expect attrition and always grow extra as a matter of course. So I’m glad for you that you still have those others.

As long as they are doing well, look for new buds to start growing, and consider separating them into individual pots for this season’s growth. Mine has only grown slowly, and have either lost leaves or sulked during the winter months, but I’m encouraged by what @imafan said of its overall potential. Now that we are experiencing summer-like weather/heat here, the (relatively, to Hawaii) short 60°F+ growing season has started and I will be uppotting mine with fresh, fertilized potting mix to encourage it to grow while it can (and is willing). It will stay in semi-shaded part of the garden during the summer.

— I only have the one, so have been hesitant to experiment, but am thinking of laying mine down sideways in a windowbox-like planter to see if I can encourage and get it to grow new growing points along the trunk, or maybe I WILL chop it in half and see if I can get the upper cutting to root while trusting the lower, bare trunk to grow new shoots and branches... (On the other hand, I may simply uppot and wait for renewed growth, THEN after it has established and starts taking off, chop it in half, etc. — It’s always a good idea to have strong, well-established roots when expecting extraordinary upper foliage growth and little “miracles” like buds bursting into growth — Hmmm,,,,)

imafan26
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It may be sensitive to over watering. It is not a plant anybody really thinks to much about. We do water the cutting when it is first put in the ground, but no one really bothers to prepare the soil in any way. Moringa is more common in hot dry areas but it is not limited to those areas. It just happens to be in old neighborhoods that have relatively large lots (and big houses), and no HOA. Waipahu and Ewa are communities with a large Filipino population. However, Wahiawa which also has large lots but not as many Filipino families do not have as many moringa trees. The community garden I belonged to is also in Wahiawa and there were moringa trees as well and it is at 800 ft, a little cooler and a lot wetter, but it probably won't be watered much there either. The soil does drain well in both places.

Moringa can tolerate flooding. The UGC garden flooded again this year for over a week and the moringa there was underwater and so far it is fine. It has been there for years so I suspect it is not the first time it was flooded. The rest of the time moringa pretty much lives on rain. However, potted plants are different they are already at a disadvantage. The soil looked really wet to me and the edges of the moringa leaves are brown which is not normal and may be from over watering.

rwright064
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Thank you for all the help and information. I have decided to just focus on the three trees that are doing moderately well at this point.



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