Help with a flowering cherry

Last spring (2005) I purchased a flowering cherry tree. It flowered and had nice leaves on it but looked a bit sparse. I chalked that up to first year settling in. Then, in about August, all the leaves turned yellow and fell off. I was a bit unhappy and thought it might not make it through the winter, but it had lots of buds, so I hoped. This spring, it flowered beautifully, and came out into leaf. However, it had quite a few branches that didn't flower. I trimmed those off. Now, it is only June 6, and the leaves are yellowing and falling off. There are no visible bugs on it, although some tiny holes on some leaves, but nothing serious. I do have good close-up vision, so if there was anything there, I would see it. I post a picture here of what it looks like overall, and then I'll post some shots of the leaves close up. If anyone has any suggestions of what may be wrong or what I can do, please advise.

Urbandale has pretty heavy clay soil but I dug it out well and did some amending when I planted it with some better soil and peat, mixed with the clay.

Here it is (poor thing) looking sort of sad.

Here is a close up of leaves. They are sort of clumped like this, and these are about the best looking ones.

Here are some yellowing leaves, tiny bug hole but not major. The fuzzy river birch in the background was just planted 2 weeks ago. All my other trees look healthier!

One more yellowing leaf and some other leaves that are still green.

Any help much appreciated!
CMox

Incidentally, here's what it looked like last year on June 7.

Nobody has any ideas?

Give them a little more time to find your thread. Most people can't check in every day. Meanwhile, are you sure you planted it properly and at the correct depth? Cherries are notoriously sensitive to improper planting. I have no idea how experienced you are at planting, but your statement about soil amendment (generally a very bad idea) makes me wonder about that. Were they container grown? If so, and if you didn't wash out some of the potting mix, spread the roots, and plant it very shallow, that could be part of the problem too.

Guy S.

I don't know anything about cherries specifically, but if you have clay soil a couple things can happen--sometimes the plant's roots have a hard time growing from the amended soil you planted it in and out into the clay soil, so the roots end up circling back on each other and you end up with a situation very similar to a plant in a pot that's become rootbound. Or since clay doesn't drain well, when you water the tree the water could just be sitting in the planting hole rather than draining nicely so the roots could be rotting. If cherries are tricky to plant correctly like Guy says, I wouldn't be surprised if it's something like this combined with maybe planting it too deeply in the ground.

Thank you Guy & Ecrane3!

Hummm....I amended the soil because the "planting instructions" sheet that came with the tree said to do so. I haven't got much experience in tree planting. I have lots of experience in veggies and perennials only. I generally have the trees planted by the nursery where I buy them because they need to bring in a big auger to do it here since it's so hard to dig. This tree was relatively small so I took on the digging myself to save $125. I have planted all my own shrubs and amended their soil too, like I have to for all my perennials and veg, but all my shrubs seem to be OK.

The tree was container grown, I definitely spread out the roots because it said to do that also in the instruction sheet. I also made sure to plant so that the large roots were just at the soil surface as shown in the picture on the sheet, so I would not say it was too deep, although again I am no expert on tree planting. But it was definitely amended. And since the clay doesn't drain well, what should I do if it's sitting in the water as ecrane suggests? I hoped the soil amendment would improve drainage.

So now I'm worried - should I dig it up, take out all the soil amendment and fill it back in with heavy clay, as if I was planting it for the first time? Should I also dig up the prairiefire crabapple and river birch that I planted this spring the same way? The peach and sugartyme crabapple (which I planted the same way last year) are both doing lovely, so I thought I had been doing the right thing. Oh dear. Do I dig them up even though they are looking so well? The rest of my trees were planted by the nursery.

If they used an auger and didn't scarify the edges of the hole, the trees they planted for you probably will do just fine until one day after the expiration of the guarantee period. And amendments (in moderation) are fine as long as you amend the enitre planting bed or mound, not just the hole.

Perhaps the best thing to do now, after the fact, would be to deep till around the original planting holes over as large an area as you can, working in some organic matter. This might create a transition zone for new root expansion, and could help with the drainage problem too. And it would move the nasty competitive turf a few feet back away from the trees. Then mulch the entire area about two inches deep. On the down side, such tillage would disrupt any roots that already have managed to penetrate the surrounding soil.

I guess if your cherry is doing poorly anyway, it might be worthwhile to exhume it this fall and start over. This time use a slightly raised planting mound and prepare a lightly-amended raised root area at least 10 feet in diameter and one foot deep. It's really tough to go back after a tree is planted and fix the problem -- much better to prepare the site prior to planting.

One more caution: the problem might be caused by something entirely different. I just suggested the root problem as the most likely thing to check first.

Guy S.

I wouldn't do anything drastic based on my comments until a few people come along and agree with me about what your problem is. I know that this is something that can happen in clay soil, but I don't know if the symptoms you're seeing are the symptoms of that or if there's another problem going on. One thing you could do is dig down into the soil a little ways and check if it feels wet. Especially if it still feels wet at the time you would normally be getting ready to water it again, you should adjust your watering schedule and that may help temporarily, but if the roots aren't able to grow properly then you'll still need to pull the tree out and replant eventually.

Guy - if I do some exploratory digging now, to see what's going on with the cherry roots, and if I find that the roots seem to be not expanding beyond the original hole, then I could go ahead with the deep tilling as per your suggestion. When you say "deep", I presume that you are saying something on the order of the 1 foot deep that you suggest in the alternate fall plan? Or do I need to go deeper than a foot?

Unfortunately, I wasn't at home when they planted the other trees. You just stick a flag with the tree name on it in the spot you want it planted and they do it while you're at work. That said, they are supposedly the tree nursery with the best reputation in these parts, and I have seen other trees they planted that are quite a few years old, so hopefully they did the scarification.

Thanks again for all your help - I'm learning a lot about tree planting!

Edited to say: Ecrane - you were posting at the same time I was typing my reply! Thanks for the suggestion on digging in a bit, that's what I think I'll do, to see how it's really looking down there. I was thinking it was some kind of disease. I didn't realize it would be root-growth related.

This message was edited Jun 7, 2006 9:15 AM

I think you're on the right track. Let us know what you find.

Guy S.

I'm not buying the ammended soil/ bad hole prep as the cause here, although you could be right. I would suspect that you would see poor results from that senerio two or three years from planting but not in the first summer/fall. The tree appers to be suffering from a watering problem from the previous year. I don't know what the weather was like in your area last summer, but there was a major drought going on here, and it was very hot (over 90 F) for most of the summer starting in early June. If that was also your situation, and you planted this tree late in the spring, like Memorial day weekend or later, the poor tree never had a chance to settle before the hard stress of the summer. If you weren't consistant with your watering program and the tree was either too wet all the time or had long periods of being dry, then the tree may have blown off a lot of its leaves trying to survive. When it went dormant for the winter, it had not developed a strong root system, and may have actually lost part of what was there when you planted it. And it barely stored enogh energy to make a good showing this Spring. Your tree looks to me like it is suffering from dehydration. I would advise that you start running a sprinkler under this tree for an hour at least once a week, soaking the entire root area. A dripping hose is not going to cut it. Buy a cheap rain gauge and place it under the tree in the root zone to measure the amount of water that you are delivering to this area. You want to put 1 & 1/2 inches of water on this root zone every week, at one time. If it gets really hot you may want to do this every 4 days. In the fall, cut the water back to an inch a week until the ground freezes. Next year you will be rewarded for you efforts and your tree should leaf out better. This watering program should be adjusted to work in concert with the rain fall in your area which you can monitor with your rain gauge. Same goal, 1 & 1/2 inch water per week, etc...

I would not dig around this tree either, you are risking damaging what root system is left. You could clean out all the grass and weeds in the root zone and put down a mulch to help reduce moisture loss and regulate the soil temperature...

This message was edited Jun 8, 2006 11:33 AM

Oh! Oh dear me, you are quite right, it was a very bad summer last year for rain. I do not have irrigation (that is this year's plan) yet, so I have used sprinklers. The tree is at the base of a gentle slope, upon which I have my raised beds in which I grow tomatoes. When the summer was so bad last year, I didn't water the lawn much, but I did water the raised beds a lot. I figured a lot of the water would drain down the slope to the tree, but I did also water the trees individually, but I have read that you're not supposed to water right around the trunk, but further out, to make the roots grow outwards and stronger. So, I didn't water heavily right at the base. Maybe that's wrong. Oh dear, it's all my fault! I'm a bad tree-caretaker. I can definitely start running a sprinkler under the tree on a regular basis as you suggest. What diameter of area is advisable? Should I specifically avoid the immediate trunk area or not? Do you think that I would see any change over, say, a month? Perhaps some new leaves shooting out or something? And if I didn't see anything then I could go ahead with the digging scenario?

If you have a sprinkler that broadcasts the water in a circular pattern, that would be ideal. You should water the whole root zone and farther out if possible. Dont worry about the trunk getting watered, its not going to cause any problems. Place the sprinkler to one side and then the other for about half an hour each, about a foot from the trunk or just place it in a spot where the rootball is covered by the spray. It wouldn't hurt to water your whole yard this way, which would help all your plants and your lawn. Depending on the cost of your water, this is a very good way to deal with a clay yard. I have one, myself (yard with heavy clay). When clay gets to dry it turns into cement. just keep watering and your tree will improve...

I'm getting an irrigation meter later this month so the cost of yard watering will go down then. I'm installing irrigation for the raised beds and flower beds (drip) and then sprinkler heads for the lawn also. Hopefully that will help with the watering, otherwise I just can't seem to keep up with moving that sprinkler all over the place! I will start the sprinkler on the cherry tonight. If I put it in the right spot, I can get the cherry and river birch at the same time, which is good. They offer those "shrubbler" or "bubbler" heads for the irrigation system also. I wonder if I should get one of those for each of my trees.

Patrick, I agree in general, but keep in mind that she has dense clay. That much water on a cherry in a bathtub-amended soil in clay probably would be fatal. Cherries, like flowering dogwoods, are very sensitive to anaerobic conditions resulting from compaction, overwatering, impermeable weed barriers, or deep planting.

CMox, if your new trees weren't wilting last summer you probably were watering them enough. Water when your finger stuck into the soil under the mulch at the base of the tree comes out dry. But when you do water, do so heavily as Patrick suggested.

Guy S.

Well, it wasn't exactly wilting, I mean, it's a weeping cherry, so it has a sort of "wilting" form already, but the leaves all turned yellow and fell off extraordinarily early. I think they were all gone by the end of August. This is what I think they are doing again, but even earlier. I think I posted about it, let me see if I can find it...

Yes, by August 25, most of the leaves were gone...

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/536826/

The rest of my trees (crabs, maple, dwarf peach, ornamental pear (yes, I know they're awful)) did not drop their leaves until October sometime. I was worried the cherry was dead and wouldn't come back, so was surprised (and thrilled) when it flowered this spring.

So I'm not sure what that points to - the watering thing or the clay bathtub thing.

Oh boy. I lost a 6 in caliper weeping higan this spring. It was planted by the nursery company March 23 this year in acid (6.5) sandy loam in full sun raised about 3 inches. The darn thing bloomed its head off, put out six leaves, sat there, then expired. It is still sitting there, large and dead. The soil was not amended. No fertilizer was applied. Mychorrizia was added to the backfill. It was b&b and the company left the burlap on. The tree was watered twice a week with a soaker hose directly over the root ball in April and metered so that it received 60 to 100 gals with each watering. You can't overwater here because the soil is so sandy. Water drains from any hole in ten minutes or less. The supplemental watering ceased in May as we got seven inches of natural rainfall evenly spaced. I have had the nursery company out here three times and they keep saying to be patient. Today I called them and said both the tree and my patience had expired. The only thing I didn't like when they planted it was the size of the rootball. Also I never leave the burlap on but a large root ball is a different matter. It was four foot. I would have preferred a minimum of 5 ft. Any thoughts?

This is a long shot, but do you have deer in the area? I notice the top leaves are fine and the bottom leaves are mostly gone. But most of the ones there look healthy. When my trees look like that, I usually notice that some of the leaves are half -munched and all of the leaves higher than a deer's head are fine. I couldn't see your other trees, but I am wondering if they are taller than this tree -or if they are where a deer might get them.
The deer go down my street eating the leaves off all the fruit trees closest to their path. They do it either at night or before I awake in the morning. They don't always leave any tell-tale evidence on the ground if you know what I mean.

Well, I do have deer in my area, but my entire backyard has a 6 foot solid wood fence all the way around. I have never seen a deer in it, and I have loads of other plants - hostas, baby veggies, tender perennials etc, that I think deer would just love to eat if they had the chance. I know deer can jump 6 foot fences, but they seem to enjoy being in the corn fields that are a little ways out of my subdivision, rather than hanging around in people's yards. The leaves that are gone - well, they turn yellow and then fall off. No sign of munching. But it definitely is a good suggestion, because I could imagine the deer liking the leaves. Unfortunately, they are all over the ground under the tree, like yellow snowflakes.

It is probably just as well that the leaves are on the ground, because as far as I can tell getting rid of deer is even harder than getting rid of gophers because cats can't kill deer.
Then I would take the advice of others on this thread. Dig near the tree to see if the hole in which the tree is planted is filled in with decent soil. Believe it or not, my mother-in-law had an expensive blue spruce planted in her front yard and it just didn't flourish. One day, I pulled away the grass that came up to the root ball and discovered that the rootball had been plopped in the hole, but the hole had not been filled in. Or if it had been, there was just some dirt on top that had long since washed to the bottom of the hole. Once we filled in the hole, the tree grew enthusiastically.
I once lost a cherry tree, again on the second year after a very good first year, and when I took it to a horticulturist, he told me that cherry trees don't like sun shining to hot on their bark when they are young. He suggested that I paint the tree trunk ( in the future) with white latex paint diluted with water. I have noticed that commercial growers do that as well. Anyhow, that horticulturist advised me to dig up the dead tree and see if it had ever rooted where I planted it -- with good soil and compost and lots of water and everything.
I dug it up and he was right. It had never sent out any roots. It just had what was in the root ball. It just wasn't happy.

Very interesting. I noticed today on the trunk there is a sort of amber coloured lump. I do not see trunk damage, just the lump. I shall take a picture of it tomorrow in the daylight and post it. I wonder if it is related. It receives absolutely full sun all day long. It is in the middle of the yard so no shade from the fence at any time.

"Amber" is the fossilized product of sap leakage. It forms at wounds, often made by borers. Maybe we all have been barking up the wrong tree?

Guy S.

Ok, here is the amber coloured blob from the front.

It was just starting to rain as I ran out there to take this, so the darker spot on the trunk to the left is a fresh raindrop, not another bit of goo.

The blob is firm on the surface - my finger is not all sticky when I touch it. It is the only one on the entire trunk and it is about the diameter of a quarter.

Here is the blob from the side so you can see the "height" of it.

Is this a typical symptom of borers then? Would they be causing the symptoms? (leaves yellowing and dropping, poor leafing, etc) Should I treat for that? (if there is even a way to treat it?) I think I've been paying so much attention to the leaves and all, I didn't look at the trunk very closely before.

Yup, that's the gum of Jurassic Park fame. If you look inside, you might find a blood-engorged skeeter that got trapped there before the sticky glob skinned over, and that blood DNA might be used by some future scientist from another galaxy in the year 2424 to clone you! Could be your ticket to immortality, and all because your little cherry got a borer . . .

Borers are difficult to deal with once they're inside. The most common approach is to admit defeat, fall back to a secure revetment, and treat the next generation before they can get inside the tree (if the tree is still healthy enough to save at that point). The other useful thing is to do everything possible to keep your tree vigorous, which we've already been through earlier.

Talk with your local extension office entomologists about it and see what they recommend.

Guy S.

I am a novice, but I can say for sure that the yellow leaves in these pictures look just like the yellow lower leaves of the cherry trees I planted in spring 2005. We have had a very soggy spring/summer here in New England and the ground has been muddy for weeks on end. Thus, it seems that the "too much water hypothesis" might still be the main issue- based on the similarity of your photo to what I see here.

Is there anything to be done to help waterlogged cherry trees? They were planted bare root and the soil is good and (usually) well drained. THe trees look vigorous and had a nice amount of growth this year. Now the leaves are yellowing and dropping and the problem is moving up the tree. Any suggestions??

Mbankson

I have a really large weeping cherry and it is very sensitive to the amt of water it gets ( I am assuming its a water issue) because it is constantly dropping leaves-not all of them, but if I remember correctly, there have been years that it has defoliated early in the fall. It just dropped a bunch of leaves. The caliper of this tree is about 20-22", so you can see its established. Is this a characteristic of this tree-to so readily drop leaves throughout the summer?