Have you noticed that your azaleas are looking a bit the worse for wear at the moment? If they have mottled grey/bronze leaves with sticky blobs of excrement on the leaf undersides, they’ve probably been damaged by either Azalea lace bug or Two-spotted mite (red spider). There’s no point in going out and spraying now, because the insects are gone – they did the damage sometime between late October and the end of February.
Don suggests fertilising in spring with something like Osmocote or Nutricote and keeping the water up to them. They will recover but the old leaves will be brown until they eventually drop off.
