I’ve used weed and feed in past years. But not this year. I’m definately seeing more dandilion and plantain this year.
I suspect Calcium, Sulfur, and Iron deficiency. I would remove a few leaves that show the symptom but are otherwise healthy and send them to a lab for analysis. Alternately you could feed it a water-soluble fertilizer containing those secondary- and micro-nutrients.
Also, in my opinion Milorganite is an over-rated and over-priced product sold as fertilizer. In particular if you look at the $ per LB of nutrients listed in the Guaranteed Analysis there are more cost effective choices in both organic and inorganic products. The other minerals listed on the cover, in advertisements, etc. are misleading because they are not in a form that are or could become available to plants.
I pulled back the mulch and some of the dirt surrounding the root ball. I couldn’t tell much. Did not look like any critters had gotten to it. The dark soil is of course the soil that the tree was potted in and the rest of the soil is my heavy yard soil. I’m a notice but to me the root ball looked okay. The soil was moist but not soaking wet. I added a bit more dirt to cover the trunk a wee bit higher. Maybe I’ll try giving a little soluble fertilizer as Richard suggested.
A water stressed tree doesn’t need fertilizer. And it’s very unlikely that a nutrient deficiency is the cause of this issue. Adding fertilizer won’t hurt in small amounts. But too much is a good way to kill a newly planted tree. The salts in the fertilizer competes with the tree for water.
Was the rootball moist? How long has it been planted? If recently planted the active roots may still be only in the original rootball. Thus it needs to be watered as if still in a pot. The moisture in the surrounding soil doesn’t help if there are no roots there yet. If recently planted try small frequent watering aimed right at the rootball. Make a little depression right around the trunk. Apply about a quart of water to that depression every two days.
I agree, but I don’t think any of the pictures indicate a tree under water stress. Further, water-soluble secondary nutrients applied as a soil drench (pre-dissolved) at typical application rates in 10’s of ppm are not going to compete with a tree for water.
Sending leaves selected as I suggested above to a place like A&L Labs will cost you just a few more dollars than a fertilizer experiment and lead you in the correct direction.
It very much looks like water stress to me. Only question in my mind is whether it’s something wrong with the tree/roots or soil too dry.
Given your climate, that’s completely understandable. @speedster1’s comment though is quite telling:
I agree with @fruitnut that is a potted tree surrounded by moist clay soil.
The potting soil got too wet or too dry.
It also looks like too much tree for that size root system.
Its been a long time since i planted apples but first year we always cut back to one leader and 6 buds.
So we would of cut back 3/4 of that tree.
@speedster1 Is it just one tree in this area?
Small chance you may have residual Atrazine.
Heavy rain can wash larger than normal amounts into the porous potting soil.
I absolutely agree 100%.
I also agree with David on the possibility of residual atrazine or something similar. It really is a lot of tree for the roots also.
It’s not azatrine. I’ve lived here for 6 years and I’ve never used it.
What if I were to cut some of the tree back, dig it up and use a water hose to remove the potting mix from the root ball. Then replant it and put the roots in my native soil? That way there would be no well.
I think if it was me I’d leave it alone for the time being.
What I think Dave was getting at is that there could be some residual herbicide of some type in the clay and that the potting soil could act like a sponge and absorb and concentrate the runoff from the clay. I’ve never thought about that, but I can see where that could happen.
Like fruitnut says, and I agree, it really, really looks like it’s having trouble acquiring water for whatever reason. It looks like transplant shock. The yellow leaves are nothing to be concerned with, it’s just the overall wilted condition of the entire tree.
I hope it pulls through for you.
To me this is a telling comment. Big tree, small rootball, and afraid to water because of heavy soil. That’s a recipe for a water stressed tree IMO.
Lots of weed and feed products contain atrazine.
I have seen lots of sick trees and people tell me they never use herbicides.
Come to find out they use weed and feed.
Scotts Bonus S, & Vigoro brands are the best tree killers.
Well maybe you guys have figured it out. Although I wasn’t familiar with atrazine I have used weed and feed type products In past years. I’m surprised to hear it would be effective in the soil when used over 1 year ago.
No matter what I do I just seem to have a brown thumb. Everyone here has heavy soil and I do not know a single person in my neighborhood that’s ever planted a bare root tree. They all plant potted trees from big box and local nurseries. When I told my neighbor I ordered bare root trees from Washington state they looked at me like I was nuts. They don’t seem to have any problem planting potted trees.
I guess this honeycrisp tree will likely die. Lowes will probably refuse to replace it since I painted the trunk with white latex paint.
I just got confirmation from Raintree that my last 2 trees will be here next week. I’ll probably kill them too. Haha. As interesting a hobby as this seems to be it certainly has me frustrated right now.
Is there anything I can do to counteract previous years herbicide if this is indeed an issue with my yard?
Could very well be atrazine but address the water issue before giving up.
Thanks fruitnut but I’m not exactly sure how I should adress the water situation. My thought was to get the roots into native soil. This would mean pulling the tree out and removing the potting mix that was attached to the rootball. Also thought about cutting one of those leaders and tipping the branches back to reduce the overall size of tree. Although doing this now that everything had leafed out seems risky.
No don’t give up, this is the fun learning curve.
I have years of experience and this year i got behind with planting.
I tried to move some bare root trees I had planted into a nursery bed.
Full leafed trees looking pretty and I slipped with the digger.
Bumped all the new roots and dirt off. Total idiot mistake.
I cut them back to 2 buds they are looking very sad but they might live.
Needless to say the rest are still in the nursery bed until fall.
@fruitnut Do you think he should prune this tree back to help it recover?
If this is atrazine you still might save the tree. The atrazine will dissipate with time. Cutting the top back is a good idea. Not to late for that. I would have done that at planting.
I’m not sure about removing potting soil. Why would that be contaminated?
The reason I suggested removing the potting soil is not due to atrizine. It is because some comments in the thread are suggesting that the porous potted rootball could be pooling water since my native soil is heavy. I guess I look at it in the same light as not amending a planting hole with non native soils. Would it not help being able to get the roots into native soil rather than leaving them in the porous mix?
You can’t pull all the non contaminated soil off with the tree in leaf. And I don’t think your tree is drowning although that can be hard to distinguish from excessively dry soil. Did the rootball seem wet or dry when you dug down?