Hi All
I transplanted a nine year old dwarf Spitzenburg apple tree in March of this year. It was doing well until a few weeks ago. Now it appears to be wilting. Any ideas. ‘Am I watering it too much?
How much rootmass did you get? Maybe delayed shock combined with higher transpiration demands? There’s stored energy in the tree upon breaking dormancy too.
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No.
Time to take cuttings.
If it like this, it is a goner. Mine is completely brown now.
Mine was planted last year.
Good luck!
I’ve moved a lot of trees that were “too old” to move, and I did lose a few. They looked like yours. I also found rodents under trees with all-over curled leaves like that. Those that lived were well-mulched and got about 4 gallons of water twice a week during warm weather. I also used some pond scum “fertilizer.”
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I had a few newly planted apple trees do this to me last year. They all bounced back fine.
If this were my tree, I would put at least a wheel barrel load of double shred hardwood much and form a donut ring around the trunk. Your tree is seeing lack of water stress. Your dirt doesn’t look very water absorbent in its current state. The mulch will soften the dirt underneath and make it more absorbent. A tree that size needs 5 gallons per watering twice a week being it was uprooted. It may benefit from pruning for the purpose of mitigating moisture loss.
Some trees are more vigorous than others. The Spitz was a fussy weakling for me. Maybe does better up north.
Transplanting a nine year old tree is a big ask, the root system on a dwarf can still be quite established. That sudden wilting a few weeks in is classic transplant shock as the roots struggle to keep up with the canopy demand. I’d cut back some of the newer growth to reduce water loss and give it a really deep soak rather than frequent shallow watering. If the wilting is happening only in the hottest part of the day and the tree perks up in the evening it’s probably just stress rather than rot or disease.
Maybe check for powdery mildew. It’s hard to be positive from the pictures and it may just be in its beginning stages. This is what makes me curious.
Thank You All
I mulched the heck out of it tonight, and I am doing deep watering twice a week. In the dark by flashlight, I noticed most leaves had very tiny (about half the grain size of table salt) pieces of what looks like pollen. I put it under my stereo microscope at about 20x and sure enough they were NOT tiny creatures, like baby aphids! As far as powdery mildew, I don’t see it yet, but I am still looking. Will report back here in a couple weeks. Thank you again.
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