cedarstudio
Our county landscape was changed for decades to come by this drought. We are surrounded by Loblolly pines, part of the Lost Pines Area. So many of them have died or are dying because of the drought. It really doesn't seem to matter the size of the trees although there are more of the smaller trees that have died. I lost all my young fruit trees this year. They just didn't have enough of a root system to survive month after month on the amount of water I was giving them. I almost lost my 10 year old Fuyu persimmon. Even though I was watering it, the surrounding dry area quickly wicked the water away. What finally had to do was to leave a sprinkler on each tree for at least 12 - 24 hours. Watering out beyond the roots seemed to help. I was able to do this because we have our own well here on the ranch. If you were restricted to hand watering once a week, it would not have been enough. I can't understand these cities that encourage hand watering since that only encourages shallow roots which dry out even more quickly. A stressed tree definitely fall prey to all sorts of diseases. In addition to losing those young fruit trees, I lost 2 beautiful 200+ year old live oak trees. Each has a circumference of over 20'. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all the others survive the stress. I know many will be dropping huge branches in the next year or two. So far, the few water oaks that survived an earlier drought and post oaks appear to be hanging on.
