Hello,
I was curious if anyone could identify what’s afflicting my Meader persimmon? I planted it from a container last fall. My guess is the tree has a mineral deficit or soil pH.
Thanks!
It could be root asphyxia, cut off watering to see if it helps.
I do not irrigate where the tree is located. Five bare root American Persimmon are planted with it and do not have any problems. My one concern is the taproot was curled-up in the container. Could issues with the taproot cause this?
I researched yellowing of persimmon leaves online. Looks like soil low in nitrogen could cause this.
Typically, you see nitrogen deficiency symptoms on old leaves rather than new. They’ll turn a golden yellow color as the tree sucks the nitrogen out of the old leaves to fuel new growth. If this is a deficiency, it looks more like one of the minerals that the plant can’t really steal from older tissues, like iron or manganese. I would look into chlorosis (which is the type of not-green growth you’ve got here). It almost looks like a virus to me, but I don’t know if there are any known viruses for persimmon that would cause chlorosis.
How curled up was the tap root? I don’t think that would cause these symptoms, but it could be a problem down the road.
Thank you for your response!
I trimmed the rootball and unraveled the taproot to the best of my abilities when I planted the tree last fall.
It appears the older leaves are affected the most. The yellowing starts at the edge and moves inward. I was going to start off by using a fruit tree specific fertilizer and acidify the soil a bit.
I put down a generous amount of fruit tree fertilizer to address any potential nitrogen deficiency.
I plan on doing a trial of sequestrene iron chelate to see if iron deficiency is the main issue. If the plant improves with supplementary iron, then I will need to figure out how to lower the soil pH and avoid the roots from becoming waterlogged. My area is known for having acidic soil so it would be really surprising that the soil isn’t acidic enough.
Have you considered applying some dolomitic lime with magnesium? build it up for drainage?
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My friend who owns a landscaping company came to check out the tree. He said the tree was probably waterlogged. Sure enough we digged it up and 2 feet below the ground is the water table. There was no indication the water table was that high when I planted it. We had to move the tree.
In conclusion, the chlorosis was probably from overly wet soil.
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See, I told you.
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@39thparallel reports his trees don’t mind having wet feet, so this is curious to me. Let us know how it turns out.
My friend said he has seen this situation before – typically if an underground pipe bursts. We are 99% certain there is no water pipe in the field. The other theory is that just a few feet below ground is a natural spring and I was really unlucky to place the tree in that spot.
That was an interesting problem , did the tree recover? Personally I would not thing a water table below 18 inches would do that unless the water was very odd in pH or nutrients. But the proof is in the growing.