So far fusia plants & petunias have died strangely - please help!

It started with 3 fusia and now 2 petunia.
Symptoms :-
On fushia
Leaves at bottom of plant start to dry out, go brown and fall off. This moves up the plant over a few weeks in end all leaves are dry and many have fallen off. It looks like it has not been watered for a few weeks.

On pertuina
Whole plant still green but leaves withered, again plant looks like no water for a few weeks.

NO. They don't need watering as soil is damp. He. He. Joke over

Any ideas? Too much water? Virus? Fungus? Not enough food?

Please help thank you!

P. S. How can I put pictures on here to show you?

P. P. S I think I figured it out- the blue and white basket is what they should be like, not the pink wall basket.

 

Welcome Howard. It sounds like they need feeding to me. This should be done once a week either with tomato food or something like Miracle-Gro. With the weather being so dry we need to water more and that tends to wash the nutrients out of the soil. Most of us use a multi-purpose compost for baskets and pots and the nutrients in that only last about six weeks. Don't forget to nip off the dead flowers too.

 

Thanks, I must admit they haven't been fed for about 3 weeks and the buds have gone this morning. Do you think same for the poor fushia?

 

Are they in a particularly windy spot?

 

They haven't been over watered have they. This would cause the roots to rot and the symptoms are like to little water.
I would let the soil/compost dry out between waterings.

 

Wind and over watering, two things what I pondered.
I read up on over watering and it looks to be same symptoms, BUT! the soil is being dried out between watering and the soil has left the side of the pot another appearance of not over watering.
Now the wind thing, another possibility, because I had some Bay trees in the same place and them leaves went brown and dry and fell off! I moved the plants and they are ok now. Maybe time to move the fushia again.
Thanks for some ideas.

 

Any way I can check the roots?

 

You can tip the Fuchsia out and see, bit more difficult with the petunia as they will snap the stems.

 

So I guess if the roots are rotten they will just fall to bits when removed?

 

You will be able to see if any healthy roots yes.

 

Well i pulled out that pertunia last night. It was looking very sorry, leaves were still green but it was really wilted, checked the roots and they were strong, no sign of rotting!
So back to what could have gone wrong?
well maybe not fed often enough and even thought fed a few days ago it had gone past no return.
Or B, the wind is hammering it and dehydrating it severly.

Back to fushia, spotted another plant today in the windy drive, leaves going yellow and dropping off from the centre and bottom of the bush. A real shame cause these have been lovely plants.
But need to work out whats happening.
Am currently moving plants off windy drive to a more sheltered area and will feed again in 5 days !

 

Have you checked the leaves underneath to see if there are any pests present?

 

Yes no pests.

 

If its multi purpose compost and its got to the point of shrinking back from the sides of the pot, chances are its difficult to re wet.
Once it gets dry it needs to sit in a bucket of water for an hour just to re wet the whole root ball.
Looking at the petunias and the weather we have been having up till a few days ago, I'd say it would be very difficult to over water.

 

What is your growing medium?
I hate baskets for these kind of issues!