This year is my very first at doing much in the way of flower beds. Last week I planted a variety of anual and perenial flowers and shrubs in 3 beds that I'd prepared. Amongst the flowers I planted are about a dozen snapdragons throughout each of the beds. The leaves on all of them (as well as some of the other varieties) are pretty droopy and I'm not sure what I've done, or am doing wrong.

The beds were prepared with a "ready to plant" soil mix I bought from Soil Building Systems that contains cotton burr compost. I mixed in cornmeal, lava sand, green sand and dry molasses. Everything is topped by about an inch or so of cedar mulch. A few days ago I fertilized with greensense and applied a spray in microbial treatment. I'd estimate that the beds are raised about 4 inches above the clay soil that had been mulched since last summer.

Two of the beds get full sun from about 8am until around 12:30pm while the other gets sun from 12pm until about 4pm. From what I understand this should be ideal, so I'm guessing this is a watering and/or drainage issue. Howard mentions that snapdragons' like moderate watering. Uhmmm.. what exactly is moderate? So far I've watered a bit (not heavily) once every one to two days.

Like I said, I'm pretty new to anything not involving maintaining grass. Looking for some help here.

~Dave

Well, I haven't treated my snapdragons nearly as well as you have, LOL

I've hardly watered them at all lately - mine were planted a few months ago with some pansies. My wild guess it that maybe you're giving them too much water?

I agree with the previous post. You are watering too much! You also are fertilizing too much. The bed you prepared had plenty of nutrients.

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The "soap" you use is normally chemicals, etc. Use real SOAP !!

Thanks, both of you, for the help.

~Dave

I plant Snapdragons pretty much annually though I really do not have to. I really like them because they are pretty hardy plants, they are very colorful, and really do not need a great deal of care.

I do agree with KHWOZ and AMG that you may be over watering them but I did not think it was possible to over fertilize with organic fertilizers. I know the chemical stuff it is real easy to do that with but I do not think that is the case with the organics. Now the only down fall is unused Nitrogen turns to Ammonia which isn't that good but unless you are constantly doing this I do not think you will have that problem.

I water my Snapdragons once a week during the hottest part of the year and they bloom from spring to fall. I mentioned that I really do not have to replant them each year this is partly because they never really die out during the winter and when they do the seeds they produce pop right back up the following year.

I gave mine a little treat of Rocketfuel (Garden-Ville) and they went crazy with blooms and greener leaves. Was just experimenting and was verah verah happy with the results! Susan

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