biwa
Senior Member
Posts: 203
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 4:15 am
Location: Virginia, zone 7

Why does my catnip have red leaves?

I planted some catnip that turned out to have purple flowers. Some of the plants look a little strange. While most of them have green leaves, 3 of the plants are multicolored. All the older leaves on the multicolored catnip plants are a bright, beautiful red. The newer leaves are green. I would post a picture, but I don't have a host site to post it to.

Is the catnip sick? Or is it some weird red catnip variety?

biwa
Senior Member
Posts: 203
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 4:15 am
Location: Virginia, zone 7

Image:
[url=https://azuki.fileave.com/red%20catnip%202.JPG][img]https://azuki.fileave.com/red%20catnip%202_t.jpg[/img][/url]

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Jess
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1023
Joined: Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:50 pm
Location: England

It is a problem with your soil...I quote [Along with nitrogen, phosphorous helps the plant produce chlorophyll which the plant needs to change the nutrients that it brings up from the ground into starches and sugars that the plant can utilize. The purplish color is due to accumulation of sugars which forces the production of anthocyanin a kind of a purple colored pigment. This will over power the chlorophyll which keeps the leaves normally green, if there is an imbalance. Not all plants will turn purple when there is an deficiency. Some will just not grow as much.]

Basically I would build your soil up when you next work on it. Add some humus with composted manure and it should turn green again.

biwa
Senior Member
Posts: 203
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 4:15 am
Location: Virginia, zone 7

Thanks Jess. I'll work on improving the soil.

WierdGardningDude
Newly Registered
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:35 pm

HEY!! Fertilize that sucker!! My catnip for the longest time was doing great, then slowly the stems started turning purple/red color, then the leaves ! I was shocked! So I turned to google and couldn't find anything until I found a website about marijuana( Go figure) who talk about the same thing happening to them (but for their weed plant) and they fixed it by fertilizing it .

Since I'm not all artsy fartsy and know all the "NPK" stuff I just use 20-20-20 fertilizer and follow the instructions on the box. So that way your not OVER doing it and end up killing the plant . Remember you CAN ALWAYS ADD MORE TOMORROW. And within 2-4 days it should be back to normal and growing out of control !!



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