Planted a Fatsia 6 weeks ago and looked great from the day of planting. However, over the past week it is losing its lovely dark green colour and becoming paler with some of the leaves yellowing. Karen

Planted a Fatsia 6 weeks ago and looked great from the day of planting. However, over the past week it is losing its lovely dark green colour and becoming paler with some of the leaves yellowing. Karen

Re: Planted a Fatsia 6 weeks ago and looked great from the day of planting. However, over the past week it is losing its lovely dark green colour and becoming paler with some of the leaves yellowing. Karen

Reply from Norman Read

I've had a similar problem. There were two causes I found: Ours needed a feed (soluble MiracleGro did the trick), but more importantly it had an infestation of capsid bugs. The bugs are hard to spot, but are a few mm long and look futuristic. Their larvae chew into the leaves and roots, and thus damage the plant's circulation. If you have this problem, new shoots will turn black and die back. The bugs reproduce on a two-weekly cycle, so you have to treat them several times to eradicate them. I sprayed with a systemic insecticide (I used Provado) each two weeks for four or five doses, fed it twice (with the feeds separated by 2 months), and our Fatsia looks great again.