I have a myrtle topiary, and I let a friend take care of it while I was out of the country. When I went to pick it up after I came back, most of the leaves were curled up and falling off. After I watered it consistently for a few weeks, new growth began to form, and the dry leaves began to fall off. Is it safe to remove all the dry leaves, or should I leave them and keep doing what I'm doing? Should I fertilize it?

Yes, if there is no green on the leaves, remove by cutting through the petiole/ leaf stem with a pair of scissors, unless the simply fall off with a light touch. If you have to pull them, you risk damaging buds in the axil above each leaf.

Fertilizer should be supplied on an 'as needed' basis; so, if you are pretty sure it needs fertilizer, now is a good time. Tip: If you flush the soil thoroughly with a volume of water = to several times the volume of the pot it's in, that has the effect of resetting currently available nutrients to near 0. That way, when you fertilize, you won't have an existing individual nutrient build-up in the grow medium which can potentially cause uptake issues with other nutrients.

If you're looking for a 'go to' fertilizer for all your plants, you would have difficulty finding anything better than Foliage-Pro 9-3-6. If you want to know why I'm sold on it and have been for decades, I'd be glad to share. What you choose does make quite a difference.

Al

Thank you so much for your help! I'll be sure to get some of that fertilizer. 😁