This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Save my monkey puzzle!
TheIronist
Posts: 5
We transplanted this 6ft tree to this spot in August last year.
It’s in clay like soil.
Up until about 4 weeks ago all seemed to be going fine and we were more than happy it had survived the move.
However in the last 4 weeks it’s lost it’s bright green and turned more yellow.
It’s been quite a hot 4 weeks so we’ve been giving it a decent water every few days (usually early morning or late evening) to avoid the leaves getting scorched.
I know it attracts spiders but I read an article that said if it has loads of dense small webs over it it may have spider mites so we sprayed it down with neem oil.
We also fed it some fertiliser, having not done so at all previously. (baby bio houseplant)
Any advice on next steps or a more defined programme of watering/fertiliser we should be following to bring it back from the edge of death?
Should we put down new soil?
It’s in clay like soil.
Up until about 4 weeks ago all seemed to be going fine and we were more than happy it had survived the move.
However in the last 4 weeks it’s lost it’s bright green and turned more yellow.
It’s been quite a hot 4 weeks so we’ve been giving it a decent water every few days (usually early morning or late evening) to avoid the leaves getting scorched.
I know it attracts spiders but I read an article that said if it has loads of dense small webs over it it may have spider mites so we sprayed it down with neem oil.
We also fed it some fertiliser, having not done so at all previously. (baby bio houseplant)
Any advice on next steps or a more defined programme of watering/fertiliser we should be following to bring it back from the edge of death?
Should we put down new soil?
0
Posts
Watering shouldn’t affect the leaves of a tree if done properly ... you need to water the area of soil where the roots are ... not the tree as a whole.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks
We water the tree and the soil too.
It was about 1.5-2ft root ball with it and then as much as we could get of one thicker (tap?) root which was about 4 ft long.
We dug the hole in the existing soil which is mostly clay based big enough for the root ball to fit comfortably and not squished then back filled with what came out.
It is mostly dense clay like soil but when we read up on it it seemed that it wasn’t too fussy about soil with heavy clay being acceptable.
Does this mean we need to water it more frequently during the dry period? Like daily?
Should we dig out some of the clay and replace with other type soils so it has more of a mix?
Could it in fact have too much water?
They'll take any amount of water, and clay soil is perfectly fine, but I think you've cut off a lot of it's support if you cut that long root off. Did you water it thoroughly every day or two after planting, for a few months?
Watering the tree itself is a bad idea too, especially if it's sunny. Always water at the base.
Houseplant fertiliser isn't the right thing to use either. There's an awful lot of other stuff round the base too - it would be better to remove all that, and mulch the area with good compost or bask to retain moisture.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
We planted in August and it did fine up until the last 4 weeks so I’m guessing it was reasonably happy with the transfer, it was watered frequently from the start for 2 months and then it was naturally quite rainy so we thought it was likely getting sufficient from that and conscious of over watering.
Seemed to do fine with the colder weather too.
Just seems to have struggled in this hotter weather we’ve been having. Perhaps we didn’t get back into watering it quick enough?
Do you have any recommendations for fertiliser and compost?
It specified house plant food on one site I looked at although I did think this was odd.
I will dig up the stuff on the top and mix some compost in but as you can see from the pic, with watering a week ago and relatively warm weather the soil does seem to be holding moisture reasonably well...
It's easy to underestimate the establishing of something fairly mature. It may have managed well enough over winter, but the recent weather will have set it back before being properly established.
I wouldn't have any recommendations on food - they just grow up here without any interference. I personally wouldn't feed just now anyway while it's struggling.
The preparation of the planting hole is the most important part. That may have been the problem - it needs to have decent drainage, and if it was planted in un-improved clay, it won't have helped, as @Dovefromabove already suggested.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...