Prune Out All Dead Areas of a Bottlebrush?

Q. I have a Bottlebrush shrub with a dead area. My question-What would be the best course of action to improve the condition of this shrub, pruning out all dead areas, then cutting it back?

Bottlebrush

A.  On your bottle brush I would guess this is either lemon or Scarlet bottlebrush. Depending on the bottlebrush it can get anywhere from 15 to 25 feet tall. You can train it as a large shrub if you want or small tree. This is an Australian plant that is not really considered a desert plant. However, they are typically fairly drought tolerant which just means they can survive periods of time with little water and recover when water is reapplied to them in sufficient quantities.

They don't particularly like desert soils and have a tough time in our alkaline soil environment. For this reason they tend to go yellow which is chlorosis most likely from a lack of available iron. They also would rather be growing in soils heavily amended in organic material such as compost at the time of planting. They will also grow better in a wood mulch, not rock mulch.

To correct iron deficiency apply an iron chelate to the soil in early spring or late winter. You can do it now and still get some response from it. The best iron chelate for the job is iron EDDHA (check the ingredients label on the label). You can spray the foliage with an iron solution several times and get a similar result but the soil application is much more ineffective and efficient.

Another bottlebrush showing extreme chlorosis in rock mulch

You will have to do this every year particularly if you continue to grow it in bare soil or rock mulch. This plant should be fertilized in January with an all-purpose fertilizer for trees and shrubs as well.

You should make a determination about whether you want it to be a shrub or tree. I like them better as small trees. If you decide to keep it is a tree then prune at the soil level so that you have 3 to 5 major trunks originating from the soil surface. Remove everything else and keep that area under the tree free from new suckers. Remove any broken or crossed limbs.

After you have fertilized this tree with an all-purpose fertilizer and iron for the next two years, then begin to work on developing the architecture of the trees canopy.