English Yew (Taxus Baccata) going yellow
d4rkcell
Posts: 4
Hello. I hope this is in the right section and I hope someone can help!
I am a total novice gardener, this has been my first foray into planting anything so please be gentle. I have done some research anyway here is my question.
I live in the north of england not far from the coast. I bought seven english yew trees pot grown and they were all about 70cm in height) I planted in my garden which is north/north west facing. The garden gets a lot of sunlight in the morning and again in the afternoon. The soil is clay like and before planting i loosened this up with a spade and wet it.
I saw a video on this site (i think) which suggested to dig a trench and fill it with manure and bone meal etc. I did this and planted the trees about 60cm apart. I backfilled the trench with a mixture of the existing soil and some top soil which i purchased from a popular DIY outlet. I firmed the trees into position and put a small amount of manure on laying on top of the soil in the hope it would eventually improve the soil that was already there.
Anyway I watered in the trees a can each and left them for about 4 weeks. I noticed the top of the trees was starting to droop and the leaves were going a golden yellow. I didn't think much of it at the time and left the trees. I decided to give them another good water (despite the fact there has been a bit of rain here) and again gave them a can each. This seemed to perk them up rather quickly I was amazed. They quickly started to droop again.
I decided to test the drainage of the soil as have read this can be an issue so i dug a hole about the depth of my spade, filled it with water, left it in the sun for 15 minutes and when i came back it was gone. So i filled it again and covered the hole to stop the sun from drying it out. I cam back an hour later and it had gone so I am pretty confident drainage isnt a problem.
I am wondering if I am being a hypochondriac on behalf of the trees. I have taken some photos. It is hard to see the yellow in these pictures due to the sunlight but hopefully someone can tell me if I am being daft or if I need to worry about these trees dying.
Here are some links to pictures of the trees I took this morning:
Any suggestions or words of advice here would be greatly appreciated. I don't think the trees are dead and I want to do everything I can to stop them from dying if I can.