"Angela Coffey" wrote in message ...
I have 5 Azalea bushes in front of my house. One is a white double blooming
one. I've noticed that the blooms are turning brown and ugly and wilting.
How do you care for Azaleas? Should I pick off the dead blooms? Will new
blooms come out, kind of like petunias do? Do azaleas bloom all Summer, or
just in the early Spring?

First, azaleas only bloom once each year in the spring. To get a
continuum of blooms, you can to plant varieties that bloom at times
from early spring to early summer. They should bloom for 2 to 4 weeks
depending upon the variety and the weather. The blooms shouldn't turn
brown before they fall. If they turn brown and are mushy, then you
may have petal blight.

Flowers that exhibit small spots which enlarge rapidly and appear
water-soaked is a symptom of Ovulinia Petal Blight. The flowers turn
brown and wilt. They remain on the plant. Some fungicides provide
control if applied when or just before flower buds open. The best
fungicides are a combination of chlorothalonil and benomyl or Mancozeb
or Bayleton. During moist seasons, control may be difficult for late
blooming varieties. Sanitation practices such as deadheading and
removal of diseased material my improve control.

It is important to remove diseased material from the vicinity of a
planting. This means removing dead material that harbors spores of
fungal disease and dying material that contains eggs of insects. Dying
portions of a plant should be cut off and removed. The ground should
be cleaned of dead leaves or flower parts. Pruned parts should be
removed.

Deadheading flowers involves removing the structure left after
blooming before seed pods form. A rhododendron or azalea flower is
composed of several florets connected to the stem by a base that is
easy to break. When deadheading just grab the flower near this base
area and twist the flower sideways and break it off in this spongy
area. Try not to break any of the buds that are around the base of the
flower. In general all dead or dying plant material may harbor disease
and should be destroyed by incinerating or placing in a trash
receptacle. Wilted flower petals can harbor fungi such as petal
blight. Dead stems can harbor larva of borers. Dead leaves can harbor
spores of harmful fungi. On healthy plants, deadheading is desirable
but not necessary.

Visit my Rhododendron and Azalea web pages at:
http://www.users.fast.net/~shenning/rhody.html
Also visit the Rhododendron and Azalea Bookstore at:
http://members.aol.com/rhodyman/rhodybooks.html
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA
http://www.users.fast.net/~shenning