Help my mature Leyland Cypresses start dying in the Texas dr

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Silchast58 Copperas Cove, TX(Zone 8b) Aug 23, 2011

As everybody know, we have the worst summer in Texas since 50 years. Every plant is stressed. We have a hedge of 10 Leyland Cypresses , they are meanwhile around 7 feet high but start getting brownish at some parts of the tree. I'm reading different suggestions about watering now. Some gardener experts say ,only water once a week, even in a drought and others say keep it even moist. I'm aware of standing water or overwatering that this will cause problems. We just have given them new mulch and we laid out a soaker hose, but we are just not sure , if we are supposed to use it every day and for how many minutes/hours? I'd be grateful about every hint you could give me!

Thank you!

This message was edited Aug 23, 2011 7:33 AM

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SoTX Karnes City, TX Aug 27, 2011

Worst in 100 years! I don/t know about your cyprus, but everything I have ever read (I have more than 70 gardening books of my own) say to water deeply but rarely. I do this even with my fruit trees with soakers 6 hours at a time once a month unless they look especially droopy.

I am now watering trees I haven't watered in years. I don't know how your soakers are laid out or what kind of soil you have, but I do a loop around the tree and on to the next to make sure the entire root area gets moisture on the fruit trees. For a single run, if you have clay soil, it will spread about 3', about 2' with sandy soil.

Hope this helps.

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Silchast58 Copperas Cove, TX(Zone 8b) Aug 28, 2011

thank you very much! We have the soaker running in the night for about a hour and then the next morning the clay soil is still moist. In addition we give the cypresses a short shower after sunset, so that they can relax in a vapor over night, this is just an experiment, but we try everything, what could save them! Today we expect again 109 degree.

What kind of fruit trees do you grow? We have one pear, which is struggling too and a medley plum ,which is in good shape, but has saw fly worms in the fruits since 2 years. First crop after planting was huge with healthy plums. An apple tree we lost due to a fungus at the roots system , was looking like mashed potatos... how I notice right now, I should have come earlier to DG forums :-)

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SoTX Karnes City, TX Sep 01, 2011

You might want to check your soil moisture level because clay can be moist near the top and bone dry a few inches down.

I have all kinds of fruit trees--more than 3 dozen. No apples or European pears because fireblight is rampant here & even the resistant ones succumb. Last year I could not keep up with the peaches and apricots; this year one peach, one pluot.

Got a cold snap--only 98 degrees today! Ha!

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