Question
Italian Cypress turnin
I live in Orlando, FL, and 10 days ago I planted 20 Italian Cypress. Shortly after planting, I noticed some of them were starting to turn brown in spots. Since then, a few of them have had entire branches turn brown, and on some, just the very tips of the foliage are starting to turn brown. I'm not sure what is going on, so I'll tell you the conditions they've seen.
March 30 - Delivered to my house on the back of a truck. The truck drove with them all day during severe thunderstorms, so they got a lot of water.
March 31 - They sat in pots in my yard and we had very strong storms again with high winds and 3 or 4 inches of rain.
April 1 - Sunny
April 2 - They were planted. I backfilled with a well draining soil mix. When I took some of them out of the pots, some of the roots at the bottom broke off and stayed in the pots. I made watering rings and watered them in real good.
April 4 - I gave them another deep watering using the watering rings.
April 5 - I applied a fungicide.
April 9 - I gave them another deep wateringi using the watering rings.
I'm thinking the problem may be one of the following:
1. fungus
2. over watering
3. root loss during planting
Hopefully this is enough information for you to tell me what is going on. Thanks.
AnswerLooks like a couple of things happened.
First tree delivered in open trucks get a real beating by the wind on the foliage--even if it is raining. Then the wind the next day also did not help.
Trees should be planted in a hole twice the size of the root ball and as deep and roots should bot be broken off. Organic mulch not more than 3 inched deep should be put around the tree not pile up on the trunk.
Tree need about 1 inch of water per week--daily watering of especially evergreen trees can cause the foliage to die as if they were drying out. Place a pan under the tree and turn the sprinkler on and when the pan has 1 inch of water in it stop--do this once a week.
I do not think it is a fungi but a reaction to the wind, roots broken and too much water.
Most nurseries will guarantee their trees to live so you may want to wait a few more weeks and if the trees do not respond to cutting back of the watering then contact the nursery and ask for replacements. It does not look like a great deal of foliage that is effected right now so waiting a few weeks will let you know if they will recover or not. I would guess they will lose what foliage that is damaged now and be ok.
