Hibiscus Revival (crape, spring, south, city)

[AK-Cathy]

I posted the thread below this summer. For weeks afterward the shrub looked progressively worse until it was completely defoliated. I'm thinking whatever the pest control guy used to spray for the carpenter bees was bad for that plant even though I'm supposedly on their Green Plan.

Anyway I left it in it's pot, cut it back to 12" all the way around and put it in our non-freezing sunporch to overwinter with fingers crossed. It has started to leaf out again now along a few of the outer limbs and is leafing out at the base only of most of the larger central ones as well. I quickly fingernail scraped the upper parts of all of the limbs and there still is some green on all of them but a few of the big ones are starting to look shriveled and might be goners.

In the spring do you suggest that I completely cut back the entire plant back and essentially start over or is it best to do that now considering the leafing out? The shrub is nearly 20 years old. I really hate what happened to it.

Thanks in advance.

//www.city-data.com/forum/garde...-yellowed.html

[Hemlock140]

Often environmental problems such as a nasty pesticide will kill the leaves and younger branches, but not the main trunk and larger base branches. Malathion, for instance, can cause severe foliage burning on Hibiscus. If this is the typical tropical Hibiscus I would have it in the house, unless your sunporch stays at least 65. After I brought mine inside for the winter I lost about 15% of the leaves that turned yellow and dropped, but since then it's put out new growth and as many as 7 blooms at once. It's in the window of a spare room facing south. You can cut it back, in fact I'm cutting mine to about 12" in spring before it goes back out just to control the size. You can also take cuttings, from good branches to start more plants. In the past I have rooted them in Perlite this time of year.